Hi

My WinXP machine had a funny episode last week - whilst I was installing an old game.
It suddenly just crashed to Desktop.

It IS a 9 year old machine but apart from this sudden blip is behaving as perfectly as it has always done.

Anyway, since the crashing incident, it has been taking over 10 minutes from my switching the machine on to my actually getting to a Windows screen I can use !!
[5 minutes to reach the Welcome Screen and then another 5 minutes before I have cursor control at the Windows screen.]

My "computer" Son in Law is not available right now so I wondered if any of you had any suggestions a total non-techie like me could try ??

Cheers.

Mad

Have you uninstalled the game that initially caused the problem?

I guess some "non-techie" things you could do would be to get rid of that faulty installation. I'd use CCleaner so that I could uninstall the game and then remove any registration conflicts too. Do a general disk cleanup also. If you don't have CCleaner, just use Windows' Add/Remove Program.

If you have a lot of old, unused programs, you might want to remove those also through add/remove programs or through CCleaner. And then try defragging the hard drive if you haven't done that in awhile.

Or there's the System Restore option if you're familiar with that process. Choose a restore point from before you tried installing the game.

PS: If you never actually got that game installed, I'd opt for the System Restore option. Then do disk cleanup and defragging.

One of the first things I'd run is CHKDSK - peruse the link below, it describes how to run it on XP.

Windows XP CHKDSK (Disk Error Checking)

I agree with Inland.
I suspect the problem is with the aging hard drive.
Nine years is quite old for a hard drive, and it may be starting to fail.

Windows files could have been damaged during the crash, or the same problem that caused the crash could also be causing the slow boot.

So the first thing to do is check the integrity of the drive with something like chkdsk. You'll want to do a surface scan (scan for bad sectors).

I usually run chkdsk by opening a Command Window and typing

chkdsk C: /R

(assuming C: is the drive the OS is installed on). The computer will need to reboot before it can run the scan with the /R attribute.

Since the problem occurred while installing a game, it would be logical to uninstall the game first to see if this was indeed the problem.

If uninstalling the game didn't fix the problem, then run chkdsk. If testing isn't done in the reverse order of actions, it's possible to miss something very simple causing the problem.

Hi All - And thank you for responding

Oh, the first thing I did after the crash was look for renmants of the game - but there weren't any. I don't think any of it got installed.
However, I did a search from the Start Menu and also ran Ccleaner. But there wasn't anything.

I keep the drives "tidy" (and defrag them fairly regularly) on all my machines and don't leave old or unused programmes on any of them.

Anyway .... I've just spent all afternoon running CHKDSK on each of the drives.
[I have three on my XP machine - plus the CD Drive.]
But all came out clean.

I suppose a System Restore is the only option left but for reasons unknown (to me, anyway ) System Restore has always failed on my XP machine.
However, I suppose I could give it another go.

The mystery is that apart from the exceedingly slow Boot Up process, everything is working perfectly. All my installed games are running without a problem and my Internet access is fine.

Thanks again, anyway, for your help.

Cheers.

Mad

When you ran CCleaner, did you also use its Registry Cleaner tool? One of the main reasons for slow boot times, along with startup programs running in the background, is registry errors. If the game only partially installed, there could be some hidden remnants causing problems. When you say you ran CCleaner, what specifically did you run? General Cleaner? Uninstaller? Registry Cleaner?

Some programs (Zone Alarm, for one) can interfere with System Restore. Try running it in Safe Mode. Also, here's a link to Windows support on troubleshooting System Restore. It gives several steps you can go over to see what might be causing your problem with SR.

System Restore Troubleshooting

Good luck! At least the PC is ok once it's booted.

Does it also take a long time to boot to Safe Mode?

Safe Mode should not take as long as a regular boot because it doesn't load all the "unessential" programs, just the few needed for troubleshooting. It helps you isolate what processes might be causing issues.

Mad:
If you've never seen Safe Mode, you'll also notice that the display resolution is very low. Don't panic! It's suppose to be that way, but it does look weird, very Windows 95.

Do you know how to boot in SM? When your computer restarts, before Windows loads, hit the F8 key. You'll be given the option in a DOS-like screen for boot modes. Some computers will require you to use a different key than F8. You should see it written for "start up options" in the lower left (usually) of your initial load screen.

Edit: LOL, Jenny, I just realized you were probably addressing your question to Mad. Sorry.

What game were you installing? Older games, especially DOS games, often modified configuration files in the root of the hard drive. If you're attempting to load a driver that's incompatible with XP it may cause a delay (although I doubt it would add up to 10 minutes).

Tap F8 when you boot the machine. At the login Menu select Enable Boot Logging. You can locate the log as C:\BOOTLOG.TXT - send it to us in an email we can go through it.

Sorry !!!!
I haven't managed to have any computer time since I last replied so all is the same !!

[I'll have to get back to you if I manage to try any of your suggestions.]

I'm still wondering which old game did this, and (if Inland's idea is right) what it could have installed that caused the problem.

I had an experience once after uninstalling an old game on an XP computer. I didn't notice a problem as such, but I'm pretty sure some files from the game remained behind in the system somewhere.

The game was The Dark Eye, the old 1995 horror one based on Edgar Allan Poe stories. Anyway, the game left a couple of registry keys that I could never seem to get rid of. Tried many times with CCleaner and deleted them manually too. They just kept respawning.

Kind of creepy really. Every time I used CCleaner, there was The Dark Eye again.