Computer now delays before bootup.

[jakfler]

Hello,

Whenever I push my PC's button to start up the machine, the computer no longer "immediately" boots up. There is now a delay between 5 to 10 seconds. I've never had that happen before. Although my computer boots up for now, the delay seems to be getting longer. I've opened the back and cleaned out the fans, PS, and CPU heatsink. Nothing works. Any ideas?

 

[Proximon]

Please provide more data. A parts list would be great. When did you build it?

 

[tsnor]

This could be the BIOS waiting for something to time out before booting. It could also be a PC with a second disk added and the bios set to raid mode pulling in a raid bios.

Can you say what devices you could have attached from the last time you know it was good until now?

As a test, pull all external connections (network, anything USB except keyboard and mouse, anything eSata, firewire, printer, scanner, pad, mp3 player, etc) pull them all and see if the boot time is quick.

The bios also has diagnostic modes that will add time while it checks memory, etc. Entering the BIOS, hitting 'reset to defaults' and 'SAVE' then reboot is a good thing to try. If this doesn't help then go into the bios, put it in diagnostic mode. Watch the extra messages. the problem is usually not the message before the pause, it's the first message after the pause.

Aside: some disk drives spin up slowly before they fail. Run SMART diagnostics on your disk drive if you can't find anything else. Post if you don't know how to do that.

gl.

p.s. If you see the windows 7 splash screen THEN the pause happens then ignore all the above stuff and post what you see before, during and after the delay including watching the hard disk light to see if on solid, flickering or off.