Hard Drive Partitioning Corrupt?
Hi,
I am working on a client's laptop (OS XP) that takes about 5 minutes to boot. But works fine once it has boot. I am trying to fix the slow boot issue.
RAM 3 Gigs (the task manager says 3.3 gigs?), lots of HDD space, deframentation ok.
I could not create a boot log and verbose didn't run either.
I uninstalled Avast and installed MSE. I checked what is programs are booting with Hijack this and it seems normal (in turns of number of programs booting, viruses, etc)
While I was working on the PC I noticed that it was trying but not able to some unknown partition.
The message read something like "unable to read" then it had something like /?/? and what looked like registry entry.
Upon further investigation:
1) There are 2 partitions. Starting from left to right a 71 MB Fat EISA healthy partition (no drive letter) and then the normal partition C NTFS 232GB NTFS partition. There is no service partition.
2) The Boot.ini reads "default=multi(0)Disk(0)Di
I believe the pc is trying, first, to boot, from the unknown partition.
Shouldn't the C partition be furthest to the left?
I have partition magic.
3) The pc has a E: drive called SD Card O2Micro MMC that freezes when touch it and and keeps coming back even after I uninstall it with Safely remove hardware.
Thanks for your help
I am working on a client's laptop (OS XP) that takes about 5 minutes to boot. But works fine once it has boot. I am trying to fix the slow boot issue.
RAM 3 Gigs (the task manager says 3.3 gigs?), lots of HDD space, deframentation ok.
I could not create a boot log and verbose didn't run either.
I uninstalled Avast and installed MSE. I checked what is programs are booting with Hijack this and it seems normal (in turns of number of programs booting, viruses, etc)
While I was working on the PC I noticed that it was trying but not able to some unknown partition.
The message read something like "unable to read" then it had something like /?/? and what looked like registry entry.
Upon further investigation:
1) There are 2 partitions. Starting from left to right a 71 MB Fat EISA healthy partition (no drive letter) and then the normal partition C NTFS 232GB NTFS partition. There is no service partition.
2) The Boot.ini reads "default=multi(0)Disk(0)Di
I believe the pc is trying, first, to boot, from the unknown partition.
Shouldn't the C partition be furthest to the left?
I have partition magic.
3) The pc has a E: drive called SD Card O2Micro MMC that freezes when touch it and and keeps coming back even after I uninstall it with Safely remove hardware.
Thanks for your help
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ASKER
It is when the splash screen is displayed and then the black screen comes up and is slow then too.
The progress bar frequently stops and then continues.
There is no log on the boots directly.
I will try your suggestions. Thanks.
The progress bar frequently stops and then continues.
There is no log on the boots directly.
I will try your suggestions. Thanks.
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ASKER
All great suggestions and some tools I will use in the future but my suspicion were correct.
The E: drive called SD Card O2Micro MMC was the problem. I went to the Dell site, downloaded the driver, reinstalled it and voila.
Thanks people for your help.
The E: drive called SD Card O2Micro MMC was the problem. I went to the Dell site, downloaded the driver, reinstalled it and voila.
Thanks people for your help.
ASKER
johnb6767
I have just tested BootLogXP and that program would have saved me tons of time.
It would have nailed the problem.
Is there an equivalent program or Sysinternals for for Vista and or W7?
I have just tested BootLogXP and that program would have saved me tons of time.
It would have nailed the problem.
Is there an equivalent program or Sysinternals for for Vista and or W7?
Sysinternals works in 7 if not mistaken.... Just be sure to launch it via "Run As Administrator"..... Both when enabling the option, as well as after reboot, to compile the data....
ASKER
Thanks people you have made it easier to diagnose this problem in the future.
have fun
ASKER
Thanks nobus, I will.
ASKER
It is only the boot process that is slow. The computer, once it starts, is fine.