Computer question...runs fine in safe mode, hardly at all in normal mode

Factual Questions
1

I did some googling and couldn’t find anything to really clear this up…

I have a PC (Celeron - not sure the speed, less than 3 years old, a gig of ram, 40 gig HDD) that will not run hardly at all in normal mode. I have Windows XP Pro, pretty sure all the SP’s are installed, but not 100%. In safe mode it runs as well as can be expected…spreadsheets open ok, no sluggishness for the most part. In normal mode it literally takes about 10-15 minutes to boot up, then I can’t really do anything except open the task manager. In the task manager I can close out of unwanted processes and it responds normal, not sluggish at all. Yet if I hover over an icon in my quicklaunch bar it won’t even highlight it, much less let me click on it.

I noticed a bit of a clicking type noise and thought maybe the hard drive was crapping out. So I disconnected it and started back up. The sound persists, so it seems the HDD should be ok…maybe just a fan getting cranky. I checked all the fans and the appear to be running fine.

The REAL kicker, though, is that I ran a virus scan (free AVG, latest version) and when it came to the MBR and boot sector it was unable to read them, and therefore couldn’t scan them. I was in safe mode at the time, so I have no clue what to do about that.

If anyone can shed some light on this it would make my year!

Thanks,

Jeff
(Sorry for rambling so long)

2

Safe mode in Windows is just using the bare minimum generic drivers. It doesn’t process “start up” type software either.

If the system runs well in Safe Mode but crappy in regular mode, one would assume this is a software problem. It could be bad or corrupted drivers, lots of software starting at boot time, or a mixture of the two.

On a rare case this could be hardware related. You might have a device failing and it causes problems when the drivers are loaded (like a network card or something), but this doesn’t sound like your problem. My guess is the system is bogged down.

A trend developed a few years back when software makers started the bloatware wars. Their misson was to take your average software title and jam pack it with every feature possible - nevermind if you needed this new feature or not.

The end result was a software title that took several minutes to load when you started it. The software makers decided no one wanted to wait that long. Instead of trimming the fat from the code, they decided to pre-load the software on boot. This way when you want to use the software it seems to load a moment after you click the icon.

If you get 3 or 4 of these types of software installed, pretty soon it takes 20 minutes longer to boot the system. Almost always this software will leave a little icon in the “tray” (next to the clock) if it pre-loaded itself.

Microsoft, one of the bloatware guilty, decided to hide some of these icon in the tray. If you go to taskbar properties there is a check box for “hide inactive icons”. :rolleyes:

First thing I would do is decide which of these software elements you want to load on boot. I’ll give you a hint - most you don’t need. It’s better to wait an extra minute for a title to load than have it pre-load and take up resources on your system when you may not even use the software that session.

Boot your computer in safe mode, go to Start and Run. In Run type msconfig and hit ok.

Msconfig has a tab called startup. You can uncheck items you do not want to load at boot. Some of the “startup item” names can be pretty cryptic so you might have to research what the title is. Look at the path in the Command section. It will tell you the directory the software is in.

Really, you can uncheck all these items leaving only anti-virus/firewall and driver utility. All other titles can be shut off.

If you uncheck something and for some reason the system won’t boot normally, just go back into safe mode and check the box again.

3

Seven, thanks for the tips. Turns out some stupid toolbar was installed that Spybot didn’t notice. I did a system restore (I had completely forgotten about that feature) to friday and it now works fine.

Jeff

4

For an extremely slow computer, my first thought is memory problems. For a 15 minute start, I will say it’s a bios setting. Check the bios to make sure the L1 and L2 cache are on. Restart the computer after turning them on if they were off.

Still broken?
Look at the speed of the processor during boot or under system from the OS. A slow incorrect speed tells you to look at the front bus speed for the memory and CPU.

Still broken?
Download a free systems test program.
Run a thourgh memory dependabilty check.

Still broken?
Post again.

5

Well that’s great. Anybody else with the problem I sugest you do the quick first two I put here.

6

Oh yeah, about hard drive noise.

Unless your hard drive is doing a repeating “clack-clack-clack-clack” I wouldn’t worry about it. Most hard drives make a chattering sound of some sort. The more you use the drive (write data to it) the more chattery it will become.

The idea of a hard drive is simple. It really is just a souped up magnetic record player. Simpley put, you have a platter (the record) and the head (the stylus). The head moves very quickly across the surface of the platter reading and writing data. The sound of the motors for the head is the chattering sound you hear.

Hard drives will have several platters (around 4) and a head on each side. All the heads move at the same time. If the drive needs to get data from the start of platter 1, the end of platter 8 and the middle of platter 3 (and do it in just a few microseconds) you can expect the “stylus” to be jumping around like crazy.

I’ve taken the cover off an old hard drive and run it. It really is cool to watch. Of course, doing this voids your hard drive warrenty (and pretty much the hard drive as well).

Hard drives and operating systems are dumb. They just write data to the drive anywhere and keep track of where this data is. Sometimes when you save a file it will place bits and pieces of it all over the drive (the file is fragmented). The next time you open the file the hard drive stylus is jumping all over the place to read all the bits and pieces. The more you use the drive the less larger blocks of space you’ll have resulting in more fragmentation of files.

Defragmenting will attempt to group files together in bigger blocks of data. This will make the job of fetching data from the drive easier. If you haven’t defragmented your drives in 3 years, I’d suspect they are due.

You can find the windows defragment utility by going to the drive in “my computer”, right clicking the drive and selecting properties. Under the tools tab you’ll see “defragmentation”.

7

About the HDD noise…I went ahead and removed the power from it to see if indeed it was the hard drive making the noise. Luckily it wasn’t. My best guess is that there is a bearing on a fan starting to go. I can deal with that tomorrow.

8

Ahh, I see you said something to that effect in the OP. Whoops.

In a pinch, sometimes you can get a little more life from a fan with a blast of canned air.

9

A warning for those blowing out a fan with air. The fans use permenant magnets, and when turned by air produce a voltage and current, that can burn out the motherboard or at least shorting component life. Disconect all these fans before blowing them out with compressed air. You can take a fan with leds that glows pretty when lit, and see it light up when you blow air through it.