HeadScratcher7
New Member
- Joined
- Nov 25, 2010
My office system is a Dell w/ Win7 and it's been running fine up until 1 month ago. Then it started this odd behavior. On a cold boot it runs about 5x to 20x times slower than normal, almost as if it's just running on a single core locked at 5%. Boot time to hit splash screen is 2.5 to 4.5 minutes (normal is 30 secs). And once I hit return on my pwd the system continues to run in super slow motion. If I just force a reboot, select Boot Windows Normally from the trouble menu, the the system boots in 30 secs, logs in fine, and runs normally.
My boss has told me that other Win7 computers he owns/operates are now doing the same thing.
I've no idea what could be causing this. Hearing that other Win7 computers are doing it tends to make me believe it isn't a problem specific to this computer or even this small office network. There are no USB devices other than the mouse and keyboard and we've switched those out. We'd recently installed virus protection software, but we removed that and the problem still continues.
The only other thing I can think of, is that we recently installed a printer driver so the system could print to a Brothers laser printer attached via USB to a computer across the local network. And come to think of it, my system wouldn't even see that printer and allow driver installation until we plugged the printer directly into my system. After installation we moved the printer back, and changed the settings for the system to find the printer across the network. I'll look into uninstalling that driver next time I'm in the office.
Update: New day, new slow boot. This time I forced an early reboot and I got the option to start a Windows Startup Repair. I started that, skipped doing a System Restore and let it run. Finally it came back with all tests fine except the following which crashed: System Files Integrity Check and Repair , Failed , Error Code #0x490 , Time Taken = 541573 ms. So it looks like the test that checks for problems crashed, leaving me to wonder if there might still be some hidden problem. And yet reboots run perfectly normal.
Oh, I've also added a second video screen, but I'm fairly sure the system was showing these problems even before I added the 2nd screen.
Until then, has anyone else ever seen such a problem?
My boss has told me that other Win7 computers he owns/operates are now doing the same thing.
I've no idea what could be causing this. Hearing that other Win7 computers are doing it tends to make me believe it isn't a problem specific to this computer or even this small office network. There are no USB devices other than the mouse and keyboard and we've switched those out. We'd recently installed virus protection software, but we removed that and the problem still continues.
The only other thing I can think of, is that we recently installed a printer driver so the system could print to a Brothers laser printer attached via USB to a computer across the local network. And come to think of it, my system wouldn't even see that printer and allow driver installation until we plugged the printer directly into my system. After installation we moved the printer back, and changed the settings for the system to find the printer across the network. I'll look into uninstalling that driver next time I'm in the office.
Update: New day, new slow boot. This time I forced an early reboot and I got the option to start a Windows Startup Repair. I started that, skipped doing a System Restore and let it run. Finally it came back with all tests fine except the following which crashed: System Files Integrity Check and Repair , Failed , Error Code #0x490 , Time Taken = 541573 ms. So it looks like the test that checks for problems crashed, leaving me to wonder if there might still be some hidden problem. And yet reboots run perfectly normal.
Oh, I've also added a second video screen, but I'm fairly sure the system was showing these problems even before I added the 2nd screen.
Until then, has anyone else ever seen such a problem?
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