Bob S. said:
Everytime I turn on my computer, after the Dell screen the cusror stays in
the upper right hand side of the screen for over a minute then windows starts
up. This started happening a few weeks ago. In the past, this would only
happen when installing new software. Any suggestions?
A pause at that stage of the startup process is usually caused by some
delay in the Power On Self Test (POST) routines that are part of the
system BIOS.
Dell support should be able to tell you how to check this out further.
My initial reaction would be to suspect some hardware component that
is malfunctioning or is at least slow to respond. The hard drive
would be at the top of my suspect list, not only because they are the
component that is most likely to fail, but also because a hard drive
failure is usually the worst possible single component to have fail.
You might want to go into the BIOS setup and look at the detailed
settings for the hard drive to see if S.M.A.R.T. monitoring is enabled
for the drive. If it is not, and if the option to do so is present,
then you should enable it.
Failing this you should identify the actual manufacturer of the hard
drive, go to their website, and download their drive diagnostic
software. Run this to check out the drive.
Good luck
Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca
In memory of a dear friend Alex Nichol MVP
http://aumha.org/alex.htm