SUPER slow booting (???) what's the deal?

thebeginning

thebeginning

New Member
A week or so ago a pretty big storm rolled through my area of town...and the power went out at my house for a good 4-6 hours. I was an idiot and didn't unplug my computers because I figured the surge protectors would keep things under control. well once the power came back on, i tried to boot up my computer. when it started to load the bios (not actually the BIOS, but preparing to load the OS...just the white text on the blank screen), it stuck. It only showed a few lines of text and it wouldn't budge. It's the 'hit delete to enter setup' yada yada screen...anyway, i tried to get into the BIOS but the keyboard was completely useless. no lights on, the buttons wouldn't respond, nothing. so i turned off the computer, turned off the surge protector, unplugged the surge protector, plugged it back in, turned it on, and turned the pc on...the usual. same thing happened. after 10 freakin minutes the booting finally picked up and booted as usual. it's been doing it ever since. OS works like normal, everything else is normal. it's only that the initial booting stage takes like 10-11 minutes (i used to be able to do a full restart in less than 90 seconds) and the keyboard doesnt work at all so i can't get into the BIOS. the keyboard works fine once i get past the windows loading screen.


might that have happened because of the power outage? this never happened before...i'm kinda freaking out though...I might have to call the company i got it from (monarch computer) but I OC'd my pc a little and that's a big no no to them so before they check things out i was going to switch it back. buuuut i can't get into the BIOS. so, crap.


any wise words?

thanks!
 
There are things you could try right off provided the bios eprom is still good and the battery on the board itself isn't on the way out. Refer to the board's manual for clearing the cmos to restore the factory defaults. This will show you where the battery holder and jumper location is. Often you simply unplug the battery and move the jumper back and forth on the set of three small metal pins in order to clear the non violitile ram.

The other thought is a possible corruption of the bios programming during the storm due to a line surge or just a need by coincidence for a bios update since the programming for some reason became corrupted. A download from the board manufacturer's support site to update the bios may be all that's needed if the bios is still good along with a good battery there.
 
correct me if i'm wrong, but don't the batteries last a fair while? my pc isn't even a year old yet...i'll look into updating the BIOS, though
 
Like anything else calculator and watch sized Lithium batteries are mass produced. You can one last for several years and the next crap in a short time. Have you ever had a AA or AAA pair of batteries go fast? While the Lithium type usually lasts far longer then most nicad type rechargables even you can get stuck with a loser after a year or so.

Many boards simply have a cheapie brand thrown on them to get them out the door. That's like ordering a case with a supply and seeing that crap in two weeks time. One of the last few cases ordered here came with a "cheapie" included which quit promptly! You can grab those cheap at any Walmart or Target for about $2.50-$3 at the watch/jewelry dept. or even in a CVS pharmacy. That should be a CR2032 as seen on most boards.
 
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