Slow boot up times, Constant BSODs, sometimes cannot boot up

[it_geek]

Hi all,


This is purely an advice thread on attempting to revive this rojak and crappy build that I have. For advice on upgrades, please hold onto them until I open an upgrade thread relating to the same rig (which will happen in the very near future).


Main problems:

• Windows 10 Professional takes damn long to boot up to user desktop (15 minutes!) (Removing the IDE hard drives reduces boot time to 10 minutes) - so this is only one of the causes.
• Windows also doesn't function stably, usually pops up one of the following messages:
• BAD_POOL_HEADER
• CLOCK_WATCHDOG_TIMEOUT
• IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL
• ATTEMPTED_WRITE_TO_READONLY_MEMORY
• NO_USER_MODE_CONTEXT
• REFERENCE_ONLY_POINTER
• KMODE_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED
• PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA
• The randomness of the messages makes it exceptionally difficult to determine the exact problem, or worse still how many problems there actually are.
• Further, after the computer reboots from the BSODs, sometimes it can boot, and sometimes it will refuse to boot entirely (it will boot up with the hard disk light on fully, and power down abruptly after 30 seconds or so, before immediately re-powering up after 1 second). And it will keep repeating. Usually, if power is cut off for about 2 days, it will return to normal until it BSODs again.

I usually hibernate this unit since it only takes 90 seconds to return to the Desktop.

Here are the specs to this rojak rig:

• GIGABYTE EP45-UD3R (rev 1.1)
• Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 with stock fan cooler (currently set to clock at the maximum speed of 3.00Ghz)
• Corsair Vengenance 2GB x 2 PC2-6400 running at 800Mhz in Bus A, Kingston ValueRAM 2GB x 2 PC2-5300 running at 633Mhz in Bus B
• 2 x 80GB IDE Seagate Barracuda ATA 7200.7 HDD
• 1 x 160GB SATA II Seagate Barracuda ATA 7200.10 HDD
• 1 x 500GB SATA II Seagate Barracuda ATA 7200.10 HDD
• 1 x 1TB SATA III Seagate Barracuda ATA 7200.11 HDD --> Current Boot Drive
• 1 x 2TB SATA III Seagate Barracuda ATA Desktop HDD
• 1 x 80GB SATA II Hitachi Travelstar HDD (2.5")
• NVIDIA Geforce 630 GT
• Cooler Master V650 80 Plus Full Modular Power Supply (650W)
• 1 x SATA DVD Writer LG

The only hard drive to report faults under CrystalDiskInfo is the one in bold, which has 3 reallocated sectors. Other than that the drives are all fine.

The computer previously had a silverstone 600W that exploded and smoked, not sure if this caused the motherboard shock.


Hoping for some answers to explain why the rig is screwing itself this way. Looking forward to all of your advice, thanks!

EDIT: Previous history
Silverstone Chibabom Incident (2014)
-Caused the 500GB Seagate Drive to suffer from 3 reallocated sectors

ICACLS Nightmare (2016)
-This one is quite interesting because I essentially restored only the file permissions from a backup (NOT a whole image, nor did I do a reinstallation). Can provide more details on this later.

 

[jtjt00]

Disconnect all HDD except the OS drive and report.

 

[Koenig168]

Probably a HDD problem. Suggest you disconnect all the HDD except the OS HDD and try booting.

 

[narkizy]

Very very slow boot up time- highly likely your boot HDD os faulty/dying. Whats the crystal diskmark score for that hdd? And move all crucial stuff out of the boot drive first.

 

[shiroyuki03]

Hi all,


This is purely an advice thread on attempting to revive this rojak and crappy build that I have. For advice on upgrades, please hold onto them until I open an upgrade thread relating to the same rig (which will happen in the very near future).


Main problems:

• Windows 10 Professional takes damn long to boot up to user desktop (15 minutes!) (Removing the IDE hard drives reduces boot time to 10 minutes) - so this is only one of the causes.
• Windows also doesn't function stably, usually pops up one of the following messages:
• BAD_POOL_HEADER
• CLOCK_WATCHDOG_TIMEOUT
• IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL
• ATTEMPTED_WRITE_TO_READONLY_MEMORY
• NO_USER_MODE_CONTEXT
• REFERENCE_ONLY_POINTER
• KMODE_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED
• PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA
• The randomness of the messages makes it exceptionally difficult to determine the exact problem, or worse still how many problems there actually are.
• Further, after the computer reboots from the BSODs, sometimes it can boot, and sometimes it will refuse to boot entirely (it will boot up with the hard disk light on fully, and power down abruptly after 30 seconds or so, before immediately re-powering up after 1 second). And it will keep repeating. Usually, if power is cut off for about 2 days, it will return to normal until it BSODs again.

I usually hibernate this unit since it only takes 90 seconds to return to the Desktop.

Here are the specs to this rojak rig:

• GIGABYTE EP45-UD3R (rev 1.1)
• Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 with stock fan cooler (currently set to clock at the maximum speed of 3.00Ghz)
• Corsair Vengenance 2GB x 2 PC2-6400 running at 800Mhz in Bus A, Kingston ValueRAM 2GB x 2 PC2-5300 running at 633Mhz in Bus B
• 2 x 80GB IDE Seagate Barracuda ATA 7200.7 HDD
• 1 x 160GB SATA II Seagate Barracuda ATA 7200.10 HDD
• 1 x 500GB SATA II Seagate Barracuda ATA 7200.10 HDD
• 1 x 1TB SATA III Seagate Barracuda ATA 7200.11 HDD --> Current Boot Drive
• 1 x 2TB SATA III Seagate Barracuda ATA Desktop HDD
• 1 x 80GB SATA II Hitachi Travelstar HDD (2.5")
• NVIDIA Geforce 630 GT
• Cooler Master V650 80 Plus Full Modular Power Supply (650W)
• 1 x SATA DVD Writer LG

The only hard drive to report faults under CrystalDiskInfo is the one in bold, which has 3 reallocated sectors. Other than that the drives are all fine.

The computer previously had a silverstone 600W that exploded and smoked, not sure if this caused the motherboard shock.


Hoping for some answers to explain why the rig is screwing itself this way. Looking forward to all of your advice, thanks!

EDIT: Previous history
Silverstone Chibabom Incident (2014)
-Caused the 500GB Seagate Drive to suffer from 3 reallocated sectors

ICACLS Nightmare (2016)
-This one is quite interesting because I essentially restored only the file permissions from a backup (NOT a whole image, nor did I do a reinstallation). Can provide more details on this later.

It looks like a lot of possibilities. Your RAM is mixture of different brands and speed. Try to use single stick. As for your hard disk, those seagate model with 7200.10, disconnect them. they are known for failure due to the firmware. it will lockup the drive even though its use minimally.

Also try using a fresh clean installation os drive and see if you face the same problems..

 

[jas1701]

The last time I face almost same issue was the fault of the PSU 450W. I have a SATA CD-RW, 1 SATA 2TB HD, 1 SATA 160GB HD and a dedicated graphic card.

When 2 HDs present, system just refuse to bootup. When I removed either 1 HD, it bootup fine. So I can presume the power not enough. After getting a 550W. now working fine.

As for your issue, as 1 member replied, just put only that HD with OS and see it will boot.

 

[jas1701]

Btw why do you need so many HDs in your PC

 

[Godeau]

Accumulating 30 years worth of data since 1991... If the disk is not dead, I will just keep stretching it until it's destined to fail. The 80GB HDDs are 15 years old now (!) and it still runs pretty well

Backup your 30 years of data(if you haven't already)

I'm not sure what you are trying to prove by re-using hdds as old as that; hdds and in general most mainstream computer parts are so affordable right now that there is no need to stretch your dollar to that extend.

My advice is to backup all your drives, when you can, and consolidate them to fewer drives. Just one single problematic drive in your rig will slow your bootup to a crawl. 10minutes+ bootup time is ridiculous. Hell, even the 90secs of un-hibernate time is atrocious in yesteryear's standards.

 

[hexenB]

[*]Corsair Vengenance 2GB x 2 PC2-6400 running at 800Mhz in Bus A, Kingston ValueRAM 2GB x 2 PC2-5300 running at 633Mhz in Bus B

You sure on this ? As there is no way for cpu to talk to different slot/channel with different speed. You can mix different speed in different slot/channel, but there can only be 1 unified speed to talk to cpu.

 

[jas1701]

Note that if both rams are of different speed, system will operate at the lower speed. Same as a router speed via a usb wireless adaptor.

 

[hexenB]

The Corsair Vengeance is forced to run at a lower speed of 633Mhz, because of the Kingston ValueRAM.

That is correct, you should edit your first post to "running 633Mhz at bus A", not 800Mhz.

Intel memory management tend to be fixed at 533/667/800 (AMD AM2/3 is different though), so if you are running at 633, then it means you are underclocking (ie, not at conventional memory timings).

You can probably put the slower kingston 667 ram in channel A (slot 1/3) so that it runs at 667 speed, and temporarily remove the corsair 800 ram and monitor. It is also good practice to put slower ram in channel A and faster ram in channel B.

A cpu-z screen of the corsair ram SPD will help.

Also, Gigabyte boards usually will have ram issues at it ages.

 

[Koenig168]

Test with different SATA ports and SATA cable. I recently discarded two SATA cables for slow access times after ruling out storage and SATA ports, which fixed the problem.

 

[Koenig168]

Just noticed that it is a C2D rig. Probably not worth the time to troubleshoot.

 

[jq75]

Ram or hdd got issue

 

[Shutterbox]

With currently running system, y don't you do a simple test.

Take one of your hdd that you had back up already, eg the 80gb hdd, n do a fresh win 10 installation on it to identify which of those running hardware is giving u problem? That way u are working with less variables to single out whuhh component (hardware or software config) is giving u the problem?

 

[jas1701]

go to msconfig and see what are the things started which you dont really need and disable it.

 

[Mclairs83]

1) Windows 10 need a minimum of 4GB RAM to run optimally without anything install.
2) With SEP installed, you can expect your endpoint runs like a snail. Try uninstall and use the inbuilt Microsoft AV. it's good enough.
3) Run memtest86 on your pair of memory stick (kingston first then corsair).
4) Run OS with all the microsoft services started without other **** started. go MSCONFIG to do that.

if point 2 & 4 restore the "speed" of the rig. den that should solve ur problem.

btw don't ever mix different speed and vendor inside.

 

[Ark Law]

Once the current upgrade to Windows 10 1803 is complete (FINALLY, windows update starts working again) I will remove 50 of those language packs and keep english, japanese and chinese... and see whether or not the computer's life is improved.

Might as well just install 1607 and tweak to disable updates. Locked windows update behaviour on newer versions would continue to strain your system further, provided you still wanna install the OS on existing HDD.

 

[Elijahonli]

This is what i recommend.
Check ur bios if the SATA operation mode is set to ACHI and not IDE.
and clean install Windows 1803.

4gb + hdd should still be decent enough for booting under 1 min

 

[Koenig168]

HDD mode has always been AHCI.


Anyway I identified the source of the crashes. It's the Corsair RAM. With that RAM in it always crashes. I tested with another Samsung DDR 2 ram and it boots fine.

Already indented replacement RAM from the U.S. Should arrive within 3 weeks from now.


Not really going to bother about the long bootup times now. As long as it boots stably I am fine...

Glad things worked out, a bit surprised that you can still RMA DDR2.