Why has my bootup slowed to a snail's pace?

[swee'pea99]

And I mean *really* slow.

I have an old IBM Thinkcentre - nothing fancy, but it's always been bulletproof and rock solid reliable. Turned it on this morning and it started going through it's usual routine...I went off to make a cup of tea, and came back to a black screen with a cursor in the middle of it. And nothing going on.

It seemed keen to stay that way indefinitely. You could move the white cursor round the black screen moving the mouse, but that was it.

I unplugged everything, opened it up, cleaned out what dust was in it (not that much...I'm not too bad at maintenance) and plugged back in. This time it did better. It got as far as 'click on your user name' - after about 7 or 8 minutes - then when I did it went to the usual 'loading your personal settings' screen - for about the next ten minutes. It was still like that when I had to leave. And that was how I left it.

Any thoughts on what might have happened to bring on this hissy fit, and/or what I might be able to do to sort it?

All advice very welcome.

 

[machew]

Boot into Safe mode, run malwarebytes or supantispyware. Run Defrag, delete temp files (all in safe mode or safe mode with networking)

 

[swee'pea99]

Thanks - I'll try that.

Meantime, any other suggestions welcome...

(I'm doubtful about virus/trojans and the like - I have avast on all the time, and do regular full scans both with it and Spybot. And I defrag using defraggler on a weekly basis. But I will try.)

 

[Scilly Suffolk]

Try this: http://codestuff.tripod.com/products_starter.html

You can see what programs are starting when you boot; thinning-out the unnecessary ones will speed things up.

However, if your PC has suddenly slowed down then it is more likely that you've got some sort of virus or, possibly, file fragmentation has reached a critical point.

If after defragging and culling the start-ups it is still slow to boot, then it is most likely you've got a something nasty on-board.

 

[Flying Dodo]

Download CCleaner which is pretty good for sorting out excess startup things.

 

[slowmotion]

You could just be running out of hard disk space.

 

[swee'pea99]

I think I have indeed caught a nasty dose of the pox. My downstairs computer, which I use for much the same sort of thing/receives the same emails etc, has suddenly gone bad as well. I did a bit of googling, and other people seem to have run into the problem that one at least is reporting. As one report says:

"I got a warning from AVAST about a suspicious file in System 32 (Rootkit.exe is the name, I think). AVAST program suggested I restart to let it scan in boot mode. I did. When I returned after the scan was done, I just had my logon screen. I logged back on, then got the same warning (i.e. to restart and let AVAST do the boot mode scan)."

I've had exactly the same happen on my downstairs machine, and the upstairs one still won't boot up fully. It gets, eventually, to the desktop wallpaper image, but no on-screen icons, no start button, no toolbars...

I'm staying at a friend's house at the moment, just to complicate matters further. I'll take another crack at it tomorrow, and see if I get anywhere. With either machine.

Thanks for all suggestions - much appreciated.

 

[jay clock]

malwarebytes cleaned mine up when the BT branded McAfee failed to spot anything

 

[swee'pea99]

E61 media test failure check cable
Mean anything to anyone? Came up during the pre-boot sequence. I've tried googling, but beyond 'give your hard drive a good whack' (which I've tried, without success) I can't find anything. I begin to suspect, tho', that it's not actually a computer-lurgy, but a hardware failure of some decription. I've tried unplugging/replugging/checking all the connections I can access, but nothing's changed. I think probably my next attempt will be to substitute another HD and see if that makes a difference, but beyond that, I think it might be new PC time. Unless anyone out there has a better idea?

 

[Scilly Suffolk]

Give the forums at 5 Star a whirl, the pool of IT savvy people on a PC forum is greater than on a cycling one.

Very helpful: they'll walk you through a step-by-step diagnosis of your problem and won't blind you with techno-babble.

Even if it can't be fixed (ie hardware failure), at least you'll know exactly what the problem is and whether it's just a component or the whole PC that needs replacing.

 

[swee'pea99]

Thanks, I will. Have to confess the main reason I tend to ask here is precisely because words of wisdom from the True Geekhood do tend to go way over my head...but I'll have a pootle round 5 star and see if they really do speak human.

 

[Scilly Suffolk]

I know the feeling, but they've helped me out more than once and I'm no geek.

 

[Nigel-YZ1]

Step 1 - Make a backup of everything that you can.

I've seen similar with impending hard disk failure, or a flaky BIOS (But I'm more of a software chap than hardware).

 

[Flying Dodo]

If the hard drive is causing problems, switch everything off, and then take out the hard drive, let it cool for 30 minutes then put it in a plastic bag, squeeze out the air and put it into your freezer for an hour or so, then put it back into your PC. It may well boot up OK and give you enough time to copy anything off it that you haven't got backed up.

This is not a wind-up, but has enabled me to backup data off failing hard drives a couple of times.

 

[swee'pea99]

That sounds so incredibly bizarre it has to be worth a shot! Thanks for that. I'll give it a go! (I can't backup...can't get to anything, gnash gnash.)