Slow PC start up
 

My OH PC with he uses not for business per-say but he does use for work and not gaming, is very slow to start up.

At first it became sluggish on start up and shut down. I used a scan/malware and CC cleaner and found nothing although the system was re-optimised.

I reinstalled windows 7 Home Premium as a clean install as it was an upgrade from Vista. The shut down is now fine and the PC works well and is quite fast again but it still takes an age to start up - 7mins in fact!


It hangs around the opening screen which has loads of white writing on a black page [sorry not sure what the tech expression is] tho' I think it's checking the system, I wonder if some thing is on it's way out or is getting stuck for some reason - any help appreciated.

Pam

hard to know, but the symptoms would suggest the hard drive would be the first thing to check. It could well be failing

Try https://www.soluto.com/home

It should give you some idea of what is slowing down your boot.

Mac

I don't think that will help as this doesn't appear to be a software issue

the OPs description indicates that its hanging at the BIOS check screen, checking hardware. Thats way before any software loads
This holdup could be an extended memory check, but its more likely to be a problem in identifying or communicating with the drives on the machine, hence my earlier comment

she said "It hangs around the opening screen which has loads of white writing on a black page " - clearly the BIOS startup screen, not software

Milo,

It could be after Windows boots - the abnormal shutdown recivery screen. It could also be chkdsk running automatically, which can happen if the "dirty" bit is set on the hard disk, whether or not there are actual disk errors.

Given that Windows does, eventually, start it looks less like a BIOS problem - Windows is unlikely to start if there's a problem hanging up the BIOS.

SD

Thanks for your inputs, I'll take a little more notice of the start up but the first thing to appear is small graphic [can't tell you what] then the screen changes after about 20 secs and that is when it starts to 'hang' and does for about 4-5 mins then the rest of the start up kicks in and takes about another 2 mins.

when it hangs, what does the last visible line on the screen say?

Run a disk check, error check, head to bed and reboot. May be disk errors.