Win XP Home/Pro Long Delays Booting and Logical Disk Manag..

I have a Dell Dimension 8200 system with two 160GB internal drives. The
first contains a Dell diagnostic partition (10GB), a Win XP Home Ed.
partition (40GB), a Win XP Pro partition (40GB), and a non-primary general
data partition (70GB). The second drive is a single partition for archiving
Ghost images of the partitions on the primary drive.

The two Windows primary boot partitions know nothing about each other and I
switch between boot partitions via Computer Management->Disk Management and
then select the active partition prior to restarting. I also have a Win 98
Startup disk I can boot from to select the active partition in the event I
have to restore a partition that was not the active partition at the time it
was archived.

For the last 3 weeks I have been experiencing very long delays (sometimes
5-10 minutes) during boot where the screen stays black or after
right-clicking on the "My Computer" icon and selecting Manage->Disk
Management before the system will continue to boot or display partition
information respectively.

Sometimes the delay only occurs during the initial attempt to access "Disk
Management" and successive attempts during the same boot session will respond
reasonably (a couple of seconds or less). Another item to note is that this
delay also impacts access to the Disk Defragmenter as well.

Sometimes the Disk Management and Disk Defragmenter access attempts will
appear to hang completely and I will have to use Windows Task Manager to end
the "Not Responding" Computer Management session.

It may be worth noting that these delays do not appear to occur if I boot
either the Win XP Home or Win XP Pro partition in Safe Mode.

I have run updated virus pattern scans of all disks/partitions both in
normal and Safe-Mode boot conditions with nothing detected. I have done
likewise with 3 different spyware/malware tools with nothing suspicious
detected. The various event logs do not appear to show any errors related to
this behavior.

I have even restored the Win XP Home partition from a Ghost image that was 8
months old and the behavior was the same. I was then suspicious of Hardware
and ran diagnostics on the entire system and extensive tests on both hard
drives with no issues detected.

I then removed both internal hard drives, restored the Win XP Home partition
only to a completely different hard drive from the same 8-month-old Ghost
image I had restored to the original disk and I still have the same
delays/hangs.

I am at a loss as to what to try next. Any assistance is greatly appreciated.

--
Best Regards,

Ted

Ted

Open Disk Defragmenter and click on Analyse. Select View Report and
click on Save As and Save. Now find VolumeC.txt in your My Documents
Folder and post a copy.

How much RAM memory? How large is your drive and how much free space?

Try Ctrl+Alt+Delete to select Task Manager and click the Performance
Tab. Under Commit Charge what is the Total, the Limit and the Peak?

Have you tried this approach?
How to configure Windows XP to start in a "clean boot" state
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/310353/en-us

Also look for Error Reports in the System log in Event Viewer.
Please post copies of all Error and Warning Reports appearing in
the System and Application logs in Event Viewer for the last boot. No
Information Reports or Duplicates please. Indicate which also appear in
a previous boot.

You can access Event Viewer by selecting Start, Control Panel,
Administrative Tools, and Event Viewer. When researching the meaning
of the error, information regarding Event ID, Source and Description
are important.

HOW TO: View and Manage Event Logs in Event Viewer in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308427/en-us

Part of the Description of the error will include a link, which you
should double click for further information. You can copy using copy
and paste. Often the link will, however, say there is no further
information.
http://go.microsoft.com/fw.link/events.asp
(Please note the hyperlink above is for illustration purposes only)

A tip for posting copies of Error Reports! Run Event Viewer and double
click on the error you want to copy. In the window, which appears is a
button resembling two pages. Click the button and close Event
Viewer.Now start your message (email) and do a paste into the body of
the message. Make sure this is the first paste after exiting from
Event Viewer.

Are there any yellow question marks in Device Manager? Right click on
the My Computer icon on your Desktop and select Properties,
Hardware,Device Manager. If yes what is the Device Error code?

--



Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
tedjallen wrote:
> I have a Dell Dimension 8200 system with two 160GB internal drives.
> The
> first contains a Dell diagnostic partition (10GB), a Win XP Home Ed.
> partition (40GB), a Win XP Pro partition (40GB), and a non-primary
> general data partition (70GB). The second drive is a single
> partition for archiving Ghost images of the partitions on the primary
> drive.
>
> The two Windows primary boot partitions know nothing about each other
> and I switch between boot partitions via Computer Management->Disk
> Management and then select the active partition prior to restarting.
> I also have a Win 98 Startup disk I can boot from to select the
> active partition in the event I have to restore a partition that was
> not the active partition at the time it was archived.
>
> For the last 3 weeks I have been experiencing very long delays
> (sometimes 5-10 minutes) during boot where the screen stays black or
> after right-clicking on the "My Computer" icon and selecting
> Manage->Disk Management before the system will continue to boot or
> display partition information respectively.
>
> Sometimes the delay only occurs during the initial attempt to access
> "Disk Management" and successive attempts during the same boot
> session will respond reasonably (a couple of seconds or less).
> Another item to note is that this delay also impacts access to the
> Disk Defragmenter as well.
>
> Sometimes the Disk Management and Disk Defragmenter access attempts
> will appear to hang completely and I will have to use Windows Task
> Manager to end the "Not Responding" Computer Management session.
>
> It may be worth noting that these delays do not appear to occur if I
> boot either the Win XP Home or Win XP Pro partition in Safe Mode.
>
> I have run updated virus pattern scans of all disks/partitions both in
> normal and Safe-Mode boot conditions with nothing detected. I have
> done likewise with 3 different spyware/malware tools with nothing
> suspicious detected. The various event logs do not appear to show
> any errors related to this behavior.
>
> I have even restored the Win XP Home partition from a Ghost image
> that was 8 months old and the behavior was the same. I was then
> suspicious of Hardware and ran diagnostics on the entire system and
> extensive tests on both hard drives with no issues detected.
>
> I then removed both internal hard drives, restored the Win XP Home
> partition only to a completely different hard drive from the same
> 8-month-old Ghost image I had restored to the original disk and I
> still have the same delays/hangs.
>
> I am at a loss as to what to try next. Any assistance is greatly
> appreciated.