PC suddenly very slow to start up - hangs on first black screen.

[Guest]

All of a sudden my P4 XP PC has started to hang on start up - it stays for
around 5 minutes on the initial black screen before finally loading up
Windows. I have checked BIOS for boot priorities and they are fine, but I
disabled all but the hard-drive as boot-able anyway, but still no success. At
a loss, once XP is fully loaded everything runs fine... Anyone else had this
and found a solution?

 

[José Gallardo]

Start > Run and type "msconfig". Go to "Startup" tab adn uncheck
everything (this will disable you antivirus and your firewall if you use
a third party one). Then restart. If the computer gets faster go again
to this tab and check the items one by one, until you find the culprit.
Are you joined to a domain?

 

[José Gallardo]

If may be faster to do what I have stated in Safe Mode. So, when BIOS
screen turns black hit F8 and choose that option.

 

[Guest]

Jose - ms.config is to select which Windows-based-programs are automatically
booted up once Windows has loaded. The delay is PRIOR to Windows booting up
so ms.config will have no affect. I have already checked ms.config and there
is nothing weird or unnecessary running at all. The delay seems to be during
whatever process immediatly preceeds the PC searching the drives to boot up
Windows...

 

[David]

Using NTREGOPT reduced my black screen time between the blue dots and the
mouse pointer from over 20 seconds to about 5. This may not be your problem
but you might try it.

David