POST slowed and cold boot acts like hibernation wake...?

booksix · 03-24-2008, 11:05 AM

Ok, so for one thing, my POST used to FLY! "Used to" being early yesterday after a few new xp installs. But now for some reason, i get 2, sometimes 3 beeps from the mobo before the video signal even kicks on! Then it still detects drives and what not... Before I could barely snap in the the time it took... what could it be?

Also, for some reason windows boots like it's coming out of hibernate. I have it setup to show no windows screens but now it shows a black screen and the "resuming from hibernate" type screen; except it shows no text or hash marks - just a big white bar moving from left to right. Why would it do this?

booksix · 03-24-2008, 11:14 AM

oh yeah, and hibernating takes about 8-10 times longer, too... I could barely see the graphic I put up before... now it's on the screen for a few seconds....

2k1Toaster · 03-24-2008, 01:23 PM

Sounds like you have been messing with some bootfiles or registry keys. Obviously something is screwed up, and instread of crashing like old old windows, XP tries to fix itself each boot which it does... but it takes forever. So somewhere in your customization, you made an error. But there really isn't a way to know unless you use safe mode.

As to the POST time taking longer, what type of harddrive do you have? Is it a lot more full now then it was yesterday? Is it colder outside?

booksix · 03-24-2008, 02:04 PM

that's ok, I'm going back to cold boot with minlogin. Hybernate looks to sloppy even after making custom screens...

As for the post issues, drive is the same. 80 gig with 4 gig partition for xp etc, 70 some gigs for music, movies, etc... Same temp (San diego... Always the same, LOL) and I'm inside as of now.... but anyway, why would the drive matter? Doesn't that only come into play at the 'detecting drives' part? Also, what about the longer 'blank screen' + beeping before the system seems to do anything?

booksix · 03-25-2008, 12:27 AM

Dang! idk what's going on. I started over manually making a new nlite version of a windows disc (all new settings). Got things great; post back to fast (idk why)... got minlogon working, ran bootvis. Tried to optimize but says "please wait for bootvis to launch" then disappears but optimizing screen never shows up. And worst of all, that stupid loading bar (as seen waking from hibernate) is back when cold booting. What gives?!?

2k1Toaster · 03-25-2008, 12:42 AM

If your optimization doesnt work, then stop trying to do it.

XP when installed the way it is meant to be runs fine and boots fine. Therefore it is in your optimization somehow. And since you seem to be de-optimizing it, just run a full XP install and disable startup programs.

booksix · 03-25-2008, 12:57 AM

But the thing is, things seem to go wrong after switching to minlogon not after my 'optimizations.' BTW, I had my setup at 10 sec cold boot the other day with minlogon and nlited XP. NO problems except the dying harddrive... RIP

2k1Toaster · 03-25-2008, 01:27 AM

Well a cold boot of 20 with a full blown XP including messenger and everything to playing music... So is 10 seconds worth this?

booksix · 03-25-2008, 01:29 AM

Yeah, I think so, if I can get it working right...

booksix · 03-25-2008, 01:30 AM

ok, update. My vid card was dying. Had all sorts of spots on screen... changed it out, no more loading bar and boot time is back to 12. Not bad, I think it could be a bit better though.. LOL

2k1Toaster · 03-25-2008, 02:04 AM

Were these new parts? It seems like an oddity that the HD and video card would die together.

Have you checked what voltages your PSU is putting out just to be sure you aren't frying things?