A friend brought me an x4000 HP Workstation with a dead video card so I install a new one. That installation went fine. I always found the computer to be really slow to pass the splash screen so I tied to go into the boot selection hoping that would speed up the process. That didn`t help. The only thing I have found that works well is to go into the bios, I check to make sure the hard drive is recognized exit and then it will boot. Once you get windows loading it loads at a normal rate.
Things I`ve tried
- updated the bios
- unplug the slave HDD
- unplug the dvd drive
I haven't had any luck with this problem. It started to work nicely for a about a week and now it's doing the same thing. I can't see it being a driver problem because the problems have nothing to do with windows. Once it gets to the part where it will load windows the computer works fine.
The hardware check when you first start up the computers seems to be really slow to check the RAM. I didn't want to start removing ram so I ran a program called Memtest86+ all the tests it ran the computer passed.
Hello, can you provide more specs on the unit? Me personally, I would do a backup and do a system restore back to factory. That way you have a fresh system and troubleshoot better. Set your bios settings for cd rom than hdd if possible. I would like to hear how you make out though.
Sorry, lately this project has been on the back burner. The last time I tried to start is up there was no picture but the computer passed the POST. Today I plugged it back in and it started up not to bad.
I don't think a system restore is going to achieve anything because the current installation of Windows works perfectly. My problems appear before Windows is even initialized. I was thinking of unpluging the master hard drive and using the slave drive as the master with a new install just to see if that would change anything. I'm hesitant to do that because I don't think windows is the problem.
My lastest idea is to check the battery on the motherboard and see if that is putting out enough voltage.
being not a laptop then don't worry about battery as that is for cmos chip that does time, date & other things. try 1 stick of ram at a time if more then 1 to see if posts okay.
Testing the ram in this particular computer isn't going to be as easy as take one out and see if it works. The ram is on an expansion board. It has to be installed in pairs and even has place holders sticks of immitation ram (don't remember the actual name). So I'm hesitant to start playing with that. I haven't been getting POST error beeps or messages that indicate hardware failure and once you do get the computer to load it works well. I appreciate the help but I'm not ready to venture into that yet.
By being slow on HP splash screen, you probably mean the screen that appears first thing when you turn on your PC and before Windows itself starts booting up?
That's usually the time when PC does the usual memory check, "which devide to boot from", etc processes, at least on my HP laptops. And those processes can be sped up only to certain degree:
1) ensure that your boot sequence has your primary HDD first and no other devices whatsoever, so system doesn't have to check which media to boot from.
2) If your BIOS allows it, remove the memory check process at the boot, it'll usually save you upto couple of seconds time.
3) Related to #1, but sometimes behind a different setting -- disable your floppy drive lookup and optical drive lookup.
4) Some BIOS versions even have "PC boot delay" or "Boot delay" setting to ensure that HDDs are "warmed up" before booting. Try disabling that.
Those are really the only tricks that I can think of that could speed up the BIOS process (i.e. the HP splash screen) before Windows starts up. Obviously, another, easier way is to make sure you never completely shut down your PC, but instead, use hibernate or sleep mode.
