Taking forever to boot, what's going on?

[Erich86 1]

One fine day I turned my m18x off and took it to a friend's house. When I got there and tried to boot it I noticed that it hanged on the alien face screen (with the red progress bar below, which loaded quite quickly), it gets stuck there for about 2 or 3 minutes before actually booting into something or even entering the BIOS.

Started completely out of nowhere, any ideas?

Thanks.

EDIT: Additional info: 2820QM, 16gb Kingston Hyper-X, 6970 SLI, OCZ Vertex III 240gb plus 750gb sata

Edited October 4, 2011 by Erich86

[Michael 1315]

i'd start with a power drain - remove the battery and the charger, then press the power button for about 30 seconds, replace the battery and the charger and see if that helped.

[Erich86 1]

Thank you Michael, I already tried that. No luck, I changed from RAID to AHCI, also no luck. I wonder what's wrong.

[mw86 1362]

Thank you Michael, I already tried that. No luck, I changed from RAID to AHCI, also no luck. I wonder what's wrong.

GO through the Bios I don't remember but maybe there is option for quick boot (doesn't do as many system tests before start-up), go to the list where it says boot up config... set you hard drive as the first drive it attempts to boot not dvd drive... sorry if both of those are already set...

[Erich86 1]

It's already set to boot via hard drive, no luck. Anybody have any idea what it might be hanging on the alien face?

Thanks!

[Michael 1315]

try removing one of the memory sticks you got,one at a time, and also change their slots.

Also, try removing the dvd drive.

see if either of those helps.

[iPhantomhive 33]

Sometimes is SSD drive's problem suggest clean install or use alienware respawn.

[mw86 1362]

Do you have latest Vertex 3 firmware from OCZ's site?

[GetFound 114]

@Erich86 A few questions/suggestions I have are:

1. What USB devices are plugged in during boot?

My Dell inspiron boots super slow if I have my external WD drive plugged in to usb. Unplug it and its fine.

As a matter of fact unplug everything except the power cord and see how it does.

2. Go into the bios and reset back to factory default.

my coworkers m17x wouldnt boot at all if usb was selected as first boot device and there was a non bootable usb device plugged in. (see #1)

3. What BIOS version are you on?

You may want to flash to A03. Not that there is some magic fix in A03, but it will "reinstall" the BIOS. I have had this fix odd i/o issues.

4. Tried removing/swapping memory sticks?

Like michael said above, trey removing 1 stick and then swapping them. Re-seating them may even help. If you are not getting any bsod's I dont know if this is the issue.

[mw86 1362]

One fine day I turned my m18x off and took it to a friend's house. When I got there and tried to boot it I noticed that it hanged on the alien face screen (with the red progress bar below, which loaded quite quickly), it gets stuck there for about 2 or 3 minutes before actually booting into something or even entering the BIOS.

Started completely out of nowhere, any ideas?

Thanks.

EDIT: Additional info: 2820QM, 16gb Kingston Hyper-X, 6970 SLI, OCZ Vertex III 240gb plus 750gb sata

I think I know you may need to check to see if your Vertex 3 is operating at sata 3 speeds and not sata 2 as I remember a fellow vertex user complaining of this and may have even been on the latest firmware... @Michael thoughts?

[Michael 1315]

i'd just remove the vertex for one boot to see if it's the problem.

If it is then we investigate further, i've never heard of it delaying boots, but that doesn't mean it doesn't

[mw86 1362]

i'd just remove the vertex for one boot to see if it's the problem.

If it is then we investigate further, i've never heard of it delaying boots, but that doesn't mean it doesn't

I haven't either but I did hear of a few vertex users stuck in sata 2 mode. Could cause delays... but like you said Michael if the vertex is removed and issue is still happening then it rules the vertex out... i'm leaning more towards what Getfound is talking about... if a usb drive or external drive is attached I get the same minute or so delay with my E-sata/usb external drive.

@Erich86

Edited October 20, 2011 by mw86

[mw86 1362]

if you get the unlocked bios there is an option under the second "performance" tab from left to right and under IDE something something is an option that says aggressive low power state or something what if you disable that... thats if you even wanted to try the unlocked bios... if you do hit reset defaults in bios... flash new bios in windows and restart and enter bios and reset to ahci instead of Raid which it defaults too and try the low power option off... you don't have to but its another thought... shouldn't need to do this because others systems aren't going through that... your situation is peculiar.

[MorpheusKiller 10]

One fine day I turned my m18x off and took it to a friend's house. When I got there and tried to boot it I noticed that it hanged on the alien face screen (with the red progress bar below, which loaded quite quickly), it gets stuck there for about 2 or 3 minutes before actually booting into something or even entering the BIOS.

Started completely out of nowhere, any ideas?

Thanks.

EDIT: Additional info: 2820QM, 16gb Kingston Hyper-X, 6970 SLI, OCZ Vertex III 240gb plus 750gb sata

Hi,

i don't know wether it's still interessting or not, i have the same problem when the external usb drive is present at boot. if i unplug it, push the power button and replug it when bios is finished it's working normaly.

[Brian 1980]

Hi,

i don't know wether it's still interessting or not, i have the same problem when the external usb drive is present at boot. if i unplug it, push the power button and replug it when bios is finished it's working normaly.

Dead thread but yes that is definitely a cause. Happens whenever my Galaxy note is connected as a USB drive.

[Scott Matusow 27]

this usually happens when you have too many USB 3 hard drives plugged in, as another poster suggested, unplug them all and it should boot faster. I have gone thru this and if you give it 30 seconds or so without removing any USB drives, it will unfreeze.