Dell desktop slow to boot

I have a dell desktop that began to "freeze" when booting up a couple of months ago after what my son says he believes was an update to quicktime or something, but he also installed itunes on this computer as his dell laptop had crashed.

When booting up the display will be black with just a blinking cursor in the upper left hand corner of the screen. Eventually after 3-5 minutes windows will begin to load and the boot process will complete.

There does not seem to be any affect on the operation once the system boots up.

Also, I purchased a sound card from dell that is supposed to be for this model desktop and installed it. I can now hear sounds/music from the speaker in the pc but when I plug external speakers in they do not work even though they are connected and powered up and volume control is on.

I have run hijack this and and 2 other malware programs but the problem could not be found.

Below is a link to the hijack this forum:

http://forums.whatthetech.com/Dell_desktop…319#entry534319

Thank you.

Gary Smith

Hi gdsmith, welcome to the Tech Side of WTT (not the Dark Side of Malware )

Please Run the PCPitstop Full Tests, here: PCPitstop Full Tests

Note: Vista users with UAC must first Right-click IE - Select "Run as Administrator"

If you haven't already registered, Click - Sign up now! (left hand column in User Login)

Register and create a password
Accept the ActiveX component to allow your machine to run the Full Tests
Registering and accepting the ActiveX are both SAFE and FREE.

The Full Tests take less than 5 minutes for most machines.

Once you have your Results, please post the TechExpress Link back here into this thread for review.
TechExpress is the last item on the list in the yellow box in upper right area of any Results page.
Post the entire URL link information back here into this Forum thread.

Note: Vista users, please close your instance of IE "Running as Administrator" after you are finished reviewing your Results.

Caution: During the testing of Video Adapter, a variety of patterns, shapes, colors and text are “flashed” onto the users monitor screen. In the many thousands of daily uses of the PCPitstop Full Tests over several years, two individuals who suffer epilepsy experienced discomfort and temporary dizziness when viewing the flashing patterns.

If you know that you are susceptible to photo driven seizure, please look away from your screen during the Video Adapter testing sequence.

Note: The PCPitstop Full Tests Results is a free service, but is supported by various paid product advertisements for utilities that "could" remedy the OP's problem.

Since WTT is a "free-help" forum, we do not recommend or endorse purchase of automated utilities, and will assist you in manually correcting any problems and settings necessary to optimize your machine's performance. Ask your questions here. We'll help you walk through any necessary steps.

PC Pitstop link

http://www.pcpitstop.com/betapit/sec.asp?conid=21814273

I would start by following the suggestions in the Recommended fixes summary, especially:

• Change Internet Receive Buffer
• Craplet Scan
• Delete Temporary Files
• Reduce System Restore Capacity
• Update Sound, Video and Game controller drivers <<< this may fix your sound problem

Under Software / Installed Software

• Google Toolbar for IE
• J2SE Runtime Environment 5.0 Update 11
• Java™ 6 Update 7
• Java™ SE Runtime Environment 6 Update 1
• J2SE Runtime Environment 5.0 Update 11
• Java™ 6 Update 11
• OpenOffice.org Installer 1.0

Uninstall all the Java ones and any others you don't need/use.

Go to Java.com and install the latest Java which is JRE 6 Update 12.

Under Software, Processes

• Sun Java Update
• Windows Messenger (old version)
• Intel hotkey
• eBay toolbar
• Speech
• GoogleToolbarNotifier

Unless you are using them, you can disable them from starting using msconfig.

Click on Start then Run, type msconfig and press Enter.
Click on the Startup tab then Disable the entries I listed above. Reboot and see if how your computer works.

The flashing cursor for extended periods of time. Your problem is a very common one of Dell desktops. I'm not sure of the exact resolution to this problem but I can tell you what I have done to solve it in the past. First of all, I noticed this problem occur when a newer, larger hard drive is installed in the Dell. The problem does not occur right away, but I have had computers come back to me after working on them a few months later for this problem. Both times in particular the computers had been hardly used, they were just backup PCs. I believe it to be a problem with the BIOS on these machines. Usually what happens is the system will just not boot anymore, period. I have fixed this issue by imaging the hard drive to another drive, and then deleting all partitions on the drive with the windows setup disc, and then recreating a partition, and starting the xp install again. After the XP install starts, I turn the power off, and then do a file copy/restore from the backup drive. The system will then boot normally again. However, I have found that so far, if I do a BIOS update on the computer, and then perform this procedure I have not had any more problems with them. I'd certainly like to know the real reason why this problem occurs, and solve it. But, unfortunately it takes hours upon hours troubleshooting this issue and people need their computers! I also believe this problem to be related to the windows boot process. I don't have any evidence to back this up, and someone here may know more about this, but I have found evidence that Windows will actually modify the boot.ini file on the fly during boot time to adjust for changes in partitioning, and drives. I think this process is related to the issue. This problem has not only occured on Dells. Please let us know if you find anything out. I'b really like to hear other people's experience or opinions on this?