win 7 slow start

Hi,I'm using Windows 7 home Premium. When the PC is running it's absolutely fine and works really well but from cold takes about 15 minutes (at least) to boot up. If the PC has been running and I do a cold reboot, it's up and running in around 3 minutes. Does this sound like a sluggish HD or failing PS? Any help welcome. Thanks for reading.

It sounds like something that only works properly when running hot. That doesn't sound like a sluggish hard drive to me. I suppose it could be the power supply but I'm more inclined to suspect something on the motherboard. I don't suppose this machine is still under warranty?

Thanks for the reply Alan B. The PC is well outside warranty. The Video card overheated when the fan failed and I had to replace the card, maybe this has done some damage to the motherboard?

I'd be more inclined to think software here as a problem
Rootkit / trojan or similar
Before changing any hardware on this machine I'd want to a thorough sanitisation, or even a complete software rebuild

If the unlikely event it is a hard drive problem, that can be found by scanning with the relevant drive manufacturers diagnostic disk. What hard drive is it?
As to failing power supply - unlikely. When they go wrong, they either don't boot at all, give BSODs, or simply cut out the power completely for a while

I have formatted the HD and reloaded OP system several times but it's still slow to boot up from cold. I've tried all the usual progs for detecting trojans, viruses etc, and nothing untoward shows up. Is there a (simple for non techie)way to log the boot up procedure to see what is holding it up? Thanks for your help.

Microsoft used to provide a diagnostic tool which would monitor bootup progress and highlight any problems, however, I don't think it is supported for Win 7.

You could try looking in the Event Viewer for anything unusual, but you probably need a technician who knows what to expect to check that out.

I cannot see how Jon thinks this could be a software problem. After all the computer works fine when warmed up but not when cold - software performance is not temperature dependent. Computers have no common sense and in the wrong circumstances will wait indefinitely for some piece of hardware to respond. I once saw a computer that was very slow to start until I removed a dial-up modem card that wasn't even in use. So one thing you can try is to remove/disconnect all non-essential hardware and see if that makes any difference.

What's the PC doing during that 15 mins? Does the hard disc activity light flash at all? At what stage does it seem to stop and wait - what's on the screen?

What's the PC doing during that 15 mins? Does the hard disc activity light flash at all? At what stage does it seem to stop and wait - what's on the screen?

The HD starts and stops periodically. The screen shows all the normality of booting up but everything is very slow. It doesn't seem to just stop in one place.

Alan
some Trojans / Worms only come "live" during the first minutes of the initial bootup of the day.
On later startups they don't launch. Similarly soem update programs only launch on the days first boot.

Thing to do here is check whats loading at startup using Autoruns http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb963902
then use Windows diagnostics to check for errors
and finally identify the hard drive, download the correct diagnostic tools from the drive manufacturer and scan with those.

Would a trojan or worm survive a full HD format and a fresh install of software from install disc supplied with PC?

theres a small caence though unlikely
However, what software did you install after the reload? What files did you copy back onto the machine?

If the computer is always switched off at night then the first boot of the day will always coincide with the machine running cold. But if it is left running overnight then it's easy to distinguish between a first-boot-of-the-day issue and a cold start issue.

type in on the start menu "msconfig" then go to the start up tab and turn off any programs that arnt needed this should speed up start up time a lot.

Oscar
How does a normal user decide which programs are needed and which are not?

Hi again. Managed to get a spare Hdisk and loaded up fresh system. Still the same problem. Tried leaving it on all night (as per Alan B) switched of next day for about 10 minutes then rebooted. System was up and running within 3 minutes, that's fast enough for me. The problem does seem to be when the machine is cold. As I've said befor, when it's running, it performs absolutely fine. I've not deleted any start up programmes, I wouldn't know what to delete anyway. Thanks for your help guys.

that would tend to suggest its actually a power issue - possibly the power regulating capacitors on the motherboard failing
Difficult to be sure though