Win2k 40-minute boot time

Alex Ethridge · 18th February 2002

This Hewlett Packard Pavilion 510N came factory-loaded with Windows XP. It is going into a Windows 2000 network and the business owner doesn't want to spend his own time learning XP, nor does he want to spend money training his employees. Consequently, we FDisked the drive and loaded 2000.

Everything was fine until we loaded the LT WinModem driver and rebooted. This is the only driver loaded other than what was set up automatically by Windows 2000 installation. No other programs were loaded, either. The boot time was over 40 minutes. Needless to say, I rebooted in Safe mode and unloaded the modem drivers. Nothing changed. The boot time was still over 40 minutes.

I gave up trying to find out what went wrong and re-FDISKed the drive and started over. Everything is fine at present and I haven't loaded the modem drivers yet and don't intend to until I back up the entire drive.

For future reference, does anyone have any idea how something like this could happen and how to fix it without starting all over again?

Hardware:
1.2 GHz processor
40-Gig hard disk
256 RAM
CD-ROM writer
Intel 810 AGP video
AC-97 Sound
LT WinModem
Realtec network card

aksedir · 10th April 2002

Hi,

I faced a kind of same trouble before. The machine was booting in more than 10 minutes. When it came back for the support, they said that they reinstalled the graphic card.

Maybe reinstalling the other device drivers can help you, but I am not sure either.

Regards

Newt · 11th April 2002

Alex - I think aksedir made a good point.

If the machine shipped with XP, the various hardware bits are probably fairly new and the drivers you are getting from the 2K load may be too old. I would download the latest drivers for everything and load them before putting the winmodem in.

And then I would go with a real modem rather than one of those winmodem abominations - but that is just me. I hate the things and can't even remember all the problems they caused before I got to the point where I refused to use one at all. Real PCI modem or external modem but none of that Winmodem stuff. It was a great idea that just never really worked well IMO.