Windows 98 booting very slowly

alfaniner

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alfaniner
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On my home computer it suddenly takes a long time to boot up. This is immediately after turning it on -- it takes much longer to start reading the hard drive before even the Windows 98 splash page comes up. It seems to run OK in normal mode after getting started but takes like 15 minutes to get to that point of completion.

Even starting it and running in Safe Mode is taking much longer. I'm running Defrag now but it is moving very slowly, like one disk read every four seconds. Any suggestions?

I cleaned out a LOT of dust from the front (none inside the cabinet) and replaced a button battery after this started -- no change.

I had just uninstalled a program and installed another, can't see why that would affect it even before getting the Windows 98 screen though.

(I will be getting a new one very soon...)

Thanks!
 
Couple of common problems:

1. Running low on disk space?
2. Antivirus program doing lengthy boot scan?
3. run scandisk from DOS prompt - check for surface errors.
 
Of course, if you HAVE antivirus software, and it's doing its 'constant' scanning, this will slow down every aspect of your computer's operations markedly.

When I used Win98, it basically melted down to the point where I ended up reinstalling from scratch once or twice a year. Later, I restored from a drive image backup once or twice a year. That was a huge improvement. Bringing my computer back from "badness" was just so routine. Right now I'm looking at my XP machine with exactly the same intention. I have a backup, but its current annoying mystery symptom (start menu bar is 'locked' for a bout a minute after it boots) hasn't reached the point where I act on it.

Basically, get the computer 'just so', and make a drive image, and the next time it melts down, restore to the previous state. Partitioning your drive so all the data is on 'D:' instead of 'C:' and doing routine incremental backups, incuding your internet shortcuts, email folders and address book helps a lot. Then when mystery badness hits, just do a quick backup, stomp the boot partition and restore the junk that you couldn't migrate elsewhere. It's 100% successful, and the 20 minutes it takes is far shorter than the (not always successful) troubleshooting takes.
 
If you're running McAfee's antivirus, make sure your boot sequence doesn't have McAfee doing a complete hard disk scan at boot time. That will cause a very slow boot, with the Windows splash screen sitting there and the horizontal color bar across the bottom moving only in fits and starts until the scan is done.

Drove me crazy...
 
Use this

This will show all load failures and delays in your boot sequence.

Warning there are one or two failures that are actually normal.

Personally, I've never had to re-install Win98SE on any of my machines. The current install has been going for three years now. I'm thinking of downloading the BSOD screensaver, because I've forgotten what one looks like. :p
 
Everyone else made good suggestions.

Here's another possibility. You say you "replaced a button battery," and the onyl thing I can think of that fits that description is the CMOS battery. If you had to replace that, there's every chance you did it because your CMOS battery was dead, in which case it probably lost it's settings. These days they'll autodetect the hard drives, so you'll still boot up, but if you are used to booting without running the full POST, and now it is, that may be the problem. You might want to check for an option in your BIOS setup utility to disable or turn down the number of POST checks performed.

Just a thought. Other settings in the BIOS may also add to the boot time, but they'd likely affect other aspects of your system in noticeable ways.
 
Thank you all for your great suggestions and help! (Filed away for future reference...)

I had uninstalled those programs I'd just put on, but forgot that I'd added an infrared unit (for uploading information from a speedometer watch) on a USB port. All I did was plug it in at the time and everything took care of itself. On a hunch I removed the device from my system (using Device Manager) and unplugged it. Lo and behold, it booted right up.

Since I work a support line, I should have known to provide ALL the info (I forgot about this as I made my first post from work). I know how hard it is to fix computers remotely because the number one rule is "Users lie" and number two rule is "Users forget what they did in the last day". But my feeling is, it's usually something simple and stupid, and chances are, the complicated solution is not the best thing to try the first time out.

Also, we say the first question Support should ask (and I should have asked myself) -- "Is everything plugged in properly?" Duh.
 
alfaniner said:
the number one rule is "Users lie"
Click to expand...
My experience has been that the number one rule is that if you ask the user what's on his screen, he'll say, "nothing" even if there are badgers, mushrooms, and snakes dancing across the screen.

Anybody got any different rule #1?
 
BPSCG said:
My experience has been that the number one rule is that if you ask the user what's on his screen, he'll say, "nothing" even if there are badgers, mushrooms, and snakes dancing across the screen.

Anybody got any different rule #1?
Click to expand...
What they really mean is "nothing different from last time I looked".

PS, alfaniner, do a defrag anyway (any way you can - Dklite is fine) - Win98 sucks all over big time until you do. better still, ditch it for Win2K...
 
FYI, this event concerned me enough that I just ordered a new computer. Even though this one is working fine now, it is almost exactly 5 years old, and now I can get 10 times the memory and disk space for about the same price as the original.
 
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