Computer Help..

[thefantom1]

My friend has a dell computer...pentium iii 800mhz with 512meg of ram.... He has been complaining that when he turns it on the big "Dell" screen with www.dell.com underneath appears and stays there for almost a full minute...alsot he computer is doing nothing at this time....then after about a minute..you hear it searching the A drive (as in a normal startup) and then it boots up... what can be done about this minute down time?? Is there something in the registery that can be adjusted?? Thanks

 

[builtbc83]

Had the same problem on a Dell Machine at work. Go into the BIOS Setup, and look at what IDE Devices it is looking for. If he only has one hard drive in there, and a CDROM then it should only be looking for 2 IDE devices, change the other settings to NONE, NOT AUTO, or anything else.

What the machine is doing it waiting for these other devices that really dont exist to 'ID' themselves so the machine can start its boot sequence.

Chances are that your friend (or one of his friends) was playing around in the BIOS and changes some things around. If you cant get it to work on your own, then go into the BIOS and find the option to "Load Default BIOS Settings" or something like that and see if that helps him out.

later,
bern

 

[Delinquent]

Also if he has an antivirus app on there, disable the function that scans the A drive on startup. I used to do tech support for dell and that was the main culprit. He could also look on the back of the computer to see if all the lights are green. If not, then he needs to call tech support or look in the manual to find out what pattern of lights he has.

 

[dballer]

tell him to just be patient.. mine does the same thing.

 

[thefantom1]

The scanning of the A drive is not the problem..that is when he knows the boot up process is starting...its the minute before with just the blue screen and the computer is just idiling......

 

[thefantom1]

I just talked to him and had him change the Quiet Boot or something like that to disabled... I see what the problem is now...he upgraded to 512megs of ram a while ago from 128...what is going on is the down time is actually the ram being counted...... from 1 to 512 and it takes a long ass time....then the boot sequence starts... so its the counting of the ram that is taking that xtra minute... how can this be speeded up?? Or is it just slow ram????

 

[builtbc83]

It depends on the machine. I am not sure if the dells have an option to prevent counting all the memory on bootup, most machines have an option in the BIOS that you can set that will skip the counting.

The other option is to leave the machine turned on I'm not trying to be a smart ass, but in my experiences, machines that are left on 24/7 (none of that power save and sleep mode bullshit either) have less problems then machies are turned on and off all the time. Part of this has to do with the voltage surge that all the components take every time you turn the power switch on.

Bern

 

[thefantom1]

Thanks guys........ he now just hitst the space bar at boot up and it skips the counting process...I'll have to go over and tinker with it (and really screw it up..) special thanks to builtbc83......

 

[HappyScrappy]

yeah, play with the bios and it will be dandy. (technically when the dell screen is up, it is doing stuff in the background, but they mask it so it doesn't confuse the types of people that get scared when words are on the screen instead of pretty pictures)

or just tell him that he needs to get a Mac - then he will never ever need to worry about anything again. ever.

 

[builtbc83]

or just tell him that he needs to get a Mac - then he will never ever need to worry about anything again. ever.

ya, so instead of having a machine that works after it boots for 2 minutes, he can have a paperweight instead

I'm just fuckin with ya, Macs do have a place (in audio/video studios) but thats about it IMHO. PC's are just much more suited (and economical) for home use.

Bern

 

[HappyScrappy]

I'm just fuckin with ya

I guess you missed some of my posts in the past.
I'm not a huge Mac fan.
although I might have to buy one eventually to develop on.

I am a huge porn fan though.

 

[Warik]

or just tell him that he needs to get a Mac - then he will never ever need to worry about anything again. ever.

Yeah I totally agree. We have Macs at the office and they're great. We never have to worry about printing, file sharing, backing up data, using 99% of the programs available for PC users out there, or remaining operational for 8 hours straight. Imagine if we had those damn PCs that were always able to print, could use every program, and didn't crash 3 times a day - shit, we'd never get anything done!

-Warik

 

[builtbc83]

yeah, play with the bios and it will be dandy. (technically when the dell screen is up, it is doing stuff in the background, but they mask it so it doesn't confuse the types of people that get scared when words are on the screen instead of pretty pictures)

or just tell him that he needs to get a Mac - then he will never ever need to worry about anything again. ever.

 

[scruples]

my PC works gud

it is amd too and stays on for weeks at a time w/o a reboot and w/o a problem

it says on the case:

i am there amd athlon reboot me and your regret it