Boot-up peculiarity

  • Thread starter Thread starter William B. Lurie
  • Start date Start date
Do you have a built-in video chip on the motherboard or a stand alone video
card. If your video is built-in then there should be a BIOS setting for the
amount of memory allocated to video (typically about 128MB).

Changing monitors was an interesting result, seems to indicate a lose of
signal and one monitor recovers faster.

JS
 
Hi, JS.
Several points. Answer to your question is, AIDA reports
video adapter 256MB.

But I've established that booting with ONLY Symantec's ccApp
in the Startup list, the problem behavior does not occur. When
I add HP's HPBootOp.exe to the list, it blanks again. I'm
working back and forth with HP's techies on it. This is an HP
Presario well within warranty.
Last point: Whatever video is allocated, it's been that way for
eight months, so it shouldn't need changing, I figure.
WBL
 
It ain't all that straightforward, JS.....not when you're
working with their techies. Now they referred me to a
piece of 3rd party software, a registry cleaner that I
downloaded and bought and is impossible to activate
because of their security key, and I have to wait for
THAT to be resolved.

This is very frustrating. I narrowed it down and proved that
just checking ONE piece of their on-board software (HPBootOp)
in the StartUp list, causes the malfunction, and they are
unable to solve the problem. Grrrrrrrr.
 
You know that utility I mentioned earlier (AutoRuns), start it up again and
see if you can find that HP software in the list, double check that you
identified it by looking at the path and executable name, also do the Search
Online (highlight and right click) option if your still not certain you have
the correct software, once you have identified it simply un-check that item
in the list and it will no longer run during bootup.

JS
 
The impractical solution from Compaq is to do some sort of
(sic) Non-Destructive Recovery which would fix their stuff
but necessitate reinstalling my dozens and dozens of
applications. Ridiculous!!

My solution is along your lines: I have removed the checkmark
for HPBootOp in the Startup list, and the video blanking no
longer happens. I also removed the checkmark for Compaq Connections
which I believe is some sort of master bookkeeping (for THEM), and
which slows down the bootup process. Let's see how this works out,
and thanks....
Bill

JS wrote:
 
JS, following your earlier suggestion, I investigated my video
and found an ATI Video Chip, Radeon Express 200 series, 256 MB.
There is some suspicion that although 256 has been and should
be enough, there are other slow-to-refresh indications that
maybe it isn't all alive and well, or maybe its drivers aren't.
Is there a test I can perform to verify or evaluate that?
Bill L.
 
According to ATI's web site the Radeon Express 200 series is a chip built
into the motherboard. This most likely means it shares memory with the
processor, but I could be wrong as I'm not familiar with this model. That
said, how much main memory did your PC come with?

JS
 
Main memory is 1024M (It came with one 512 and I added
a second 512). Task Manager shows it's all there (well,
984M) and less than half in use under steady-state
conditions. Even if the chip shares memory, it would seem
to me that there's enough to go around. But malfunctioning
only started a few weeks ago.
WBL
 
You have more than enough memory. Lets see if something is loading down the
CPU and causing the slow refresh.
Starting Task Manager (Ctrl+Alt+Del keys), click on the Performance tab,
what does the CPU usage % show?

JS
 
Very low CPU usage under most circumstances, JS. But I will
make a test to see what it shows during bootup. I'l put
the offender back in and reboot, and watch CPU usage as
the screen blanks. Good thought.....
 
No, JS, that isn't the answer. CPU usage was pretty heavy (50
to 70% while NSW was loading all of its stuff) but went down
to almost nothing for several seconds while screen blanked.
When it came back on, the line showed steady, very little CPU,
bother before, during, and after blanking.
WBL
 
Have you used Windows built-in Disk Cleanup utility lately to clean
up/remove temp files and other trash from your PC lately.
Also how much free space do you have remaining on your hard drive?

JS
 
All good thought, JS, but I been there, done them all, defrag
and chkdsk/r in addition. Hard drive.....partition is 20 GB with
25% unused....../WBL/
 
Not using IE7 by any chance?

JS

William B. Lurie said:
All good thought, JS, but I been there, done them all, defrag
and chkdsk/r in addition. Hard drive.....partition is 20 GB with
25% unused....../WBL/
Click to expand...
 
Another good thought, JS, but, no, I have an icon to IE
just for those rare cases where some app demands it, but
I was Netscape from NS2 on until Mozilla and Firefox
arrived, and that's all I do for mail and browsing.
WBL
 
Ok, we have identified that the HP Boot optimization was part of the
problem,
You've cleaned and defragged the hard drive as well as loaded the most
recent video drivers.
Checked the no other process was eating up CPU resources.
Used AutoRuns to stop some apps from booting.

One thing that may put things back to the way they were is to delete the
Windows Prefetch files.
They are located: C:\WINDOWS\Prefetch directory.
After they are deleted it will take about 4 or 5 reboots for the PC to be
fully up to speed, you may
notice that the first few reboots will be slower than usual. After each
reboot run and exit the
applications you normally use and then reboot again and repeat the process
of running common
applications.


Information on the Prefetch files and how they are used.
http://www.windowsnetworking.com/articles_tutorials/Gaining-Speed-Empty-Prefetch-XP.html

JS
 
Thanks for all the help, JS. I think I've
learned all I can, and will live with iy.
Thanks again.//Bill//
 
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