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Takes forever to start up when powered on

A customer brought in an hp Pavilion dv7-1245dx running windows vista and the issue is that when they start it up nothing will come on the screen for at least 15 minutes or so and then it will boot into windows fine and run fine. I removed the keyboard, hard drive, wifi card to see if that would make a difference but it is still the same. I did a bios update but that doesn't seem to help either. I also changed out the memory sticks. Nothing seems to help. I have not taken the MB out of the laptop yet. Can someone help me with this?

John

Windows Vista? So it says above. Not much for Vista.

Try running SFC /SCANNOW from an Admin Command Prompt, allow to complete, restart and test.

I removed the … hard drive … to see if that would make a difference

Did you test the hard drive? It could have errors. Get the HP Support app for that model for testing hard drives.

Will Schmidt

ASKER

Ok, I guess I should have told the whole story. I replaced the drive with an SSD drive, and installed windows 7 before updating the BIOS.
Once the laptop decides to take off and go it runs perfect

John

You have Windows 7 on an SSD drive and it takes 15 minutes to start?

Is there a compatibility problem between the HP Computer and the SSD drive?

Note added: Is the BIOS compatible with the SSD drive?

Will Schmidt

ASKER

Let me say it this way - the laptop waits 15 minutes with a blank screen before it begins to boot from the drive. Once it begins to boot from the drive it takes only seconds to get into windows,

Will Schmidt

ASKER

In other words, when I press the start button, there is nothing comes on the screen-only the lights above the keyboard come on and after 15 minutes it suddenly says "starting windows" and seconds later it is up and running

John

Yes. That means the computer is trying to figure out was is going on.

1. SSD incompatibility
2. BIOS incompatibility
3. CPU / motherboard issue (although I am not sure what to say on this one).

Will Schmidt

ASKER

If it is ssd incompatibility why did it do it before replacing the drive? I think, first thing in the morning I am going to pull the hard drive out and start it up on the table by itself and see what happens.

Will Schmidt

ASKER

I meant pull out the MB, not the hard drive.

John

That is one test worth doing just to see. In particular do you get the same inaction at the screen?

Will Schmidt

ASKER

Yes it is pretty consistent, if that is what you are asking. However what is interesting right after I did the BIOS update it started up a lot quicker, waiting, maybe only a minute. but now tonight it's right back like it was before. strangest thing i have ever seen. Goodnight for now. Will give an update in the morning.

John

See you in the morning.

That is strange and starts (in my head) to implicate something in the CPU or on the motherboard. The last test (BIOS update) is not hard / SSD drive related because it started faster and then went back to slow.

Are there any bulging capacitors on the board?

dbrunton

Is this machine networked? If so, disconnect and retest startup.

You've got the old hard disk? Attach it as slave to another machine and use that machine's anti-virus utility to check that hard disk out.

I'm suspecting virus or something is doing an online check on startup and preventing the machine from going further.

John

Also, since this machine came with Vista, it is long past its best before date, so it may simply be time to replace it.

CompProbSolv

"I removed the keyboard, hard drive, wifi card to see if that would make a difference but it is still the same."
With all of those parts removed, it takes 15 minutes to see anything on the screen? If so, this clearly has nothing to do with the hard drive. It has to do with the POST process.

If you really want to know what is going on during POST, get one of the inexpensive ($4-20 on eBay) boards that will display the diagnostic codes that the BIOS sends as it starts up.

nobus

when you boot up, can you go in the bios directly, or do you have to wait ( usually, bios is Del, or F2 key) ?

post a couple of pictures of the bios settings, showing disk ansd sata settings

you can also disable sound, lan and other settings for testing

Will Schmidt

ASKER

Ok, here is an update: I removed the MB, with everything unplugged that could be unplugged. It took 13 seconds (without the SSD plugged in) for it to say there was no bootable drive. i plugged in the SSD and it took 8 seconds to begin booting from the SSD. I plugged in a mouse and this time it took 12 minutes to start booting up. I unplugged the mouse and again, 8 seconds to booting up.
I sent some pics of the BIOS.

John

I have not seen a mouse do that but it could be incompatible or defective. Did you try a different mouse? Does any mouse do this?

SOLUTION

nobus

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Robert Retzer

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Will Schmidt

ASKER

Sorry I was distracted and didn't get the pics sent. here they are now.

The mouse works perfect on any other computer

It acts the same with an external keyboard plugged in to usb also

the laptop keyboard does not effect it
20190118_081905.jpg
20190118_084253.jpg
20190118_084316.jpg
20190118_084335.jpg

nobus

what shows in the diagnostic log in pic316 ?

SOLUTION

CompProbSolv

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Will Schmidt

ASKER

I ran a memory test & hard drive test-all showed ok. the Diagnostic log didn't show anything.

nobus

Will, can you answer my question? i asked :" what shows in the diagnostic log in pic316 ? '

Will Schmidt

ASKER

Ok, thanks to all of you for your help help and support, the issue has been resolved. i re-assembled the laptop, set the boot sequence in BIOS to boot from the SSD drive and updated the BIOS. The laptop now boots up in 20 seconds or less.

CompProbSolv

I'd want to find exactly which resolved the problem as I may run into it again. I'd suggest changing the boot order (especially with a USB device listed first) and see if that (with the mouse or keyboard connected) was the specific issue.

Will Schmidt

ASKER

If I would have had more time I would have did more diagnostics on the board to narrow the exact cause, but since the customer was wanting the laptop back ASAP and also I had quite a few other projects that needing to get done, I finished the job and got on with something else. But I really think that changing the boot order is what fixed the issue. There was something, somewhere, on the motherboard that was hanging it up. But, like I said, time was a factor in finding the root cause.

Robert Retzer

thanks for the feedback, changing the boot order definitely will affect the time for the system to boot to windows. Especially when it is seeking for a OS to boot to in each item within the boot order before it finally reaches the hard drive. Often it will sit on the device in case it is waiting for you to insert a disc if the optical drive was first in the boot order, or if it trying to do a pixie boot from the network if the network drive was in the boot order. Glad it was resolved thanks for fairly distributing the points.