Monitor Fault - Now PC takes half hour to boot up

[carlio_fandango]

Hi guys - hope you can help.

 

Went to switch on my PC this morning, and my Dell monitor (which has been a little tempremental recently just had a flashing green power light).

 

As I do not have a back up monitor, I plugged into my sons 32"HDTV.

 

The PC booted up to the Hewlett Packard purple main screen (with bootup & BIOS options) and then hung there for some time.. Eventually it came up with a Startup Repair screen but this did nothing.

 

Windows eventually (After half hour at least) booted up, but the performance was terrible.. Most programs wouldn't load and even browsing the HD took some time..

 

I tried a restart but again this took forever I am fairly computer savvy but this one has me stumped.

 

Here are my PC specs. The only problem I see here is the RAM - I actually have 2 x 2Gb in there

 

OS Version: Microsoft® Windows Vista™ Home Premium , Service Pack 2, 32 bit

Processor: Intel® Core2 Quad CPU Q6600 @ 2.40GHz, x64 Family 6 Model 15 Stepping 11

Processor Count: 4

RAM: 3070 Mb

Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce 7050 / NVIDIA nForce 610i, 256 Mb

Hard Drives: C: Total - 598189 MB, Free - 182858 MB;

Motherboard: Packard Bell BV, MCP73VT-PM, 1.0, 00000000

Antivirus: Sophos Anti-Virus, Updated and Enabled

 

Any help would be much appreciated, as I have a fair amount of stuff on my HD I need access to.

 

Many thanks

[PseFrank]

Hi Carlio, welcome to Extreme Tech Support - Free PC Help

 

Ok...first off, I don't think that your monitor is your only problem here. You said yourself that its been playing up of late. So on that score I feel that you should try and establish what is wrong with your monitor first.

 

It may seem an obvious thing to say, but I would check the monitor cables for any obvious damage, and also to establish that the cables have been plugged in securely.

Even better than that would be to take the monitor to a friend or relative who uses a computer and plug the monitor into a healthy machine. You could also borrow a laptop and do the same thing.

 

Note: If you plug into a laptop, you may have to use a key combination for the external monitor to work. This is often Fn + F4 or F5.

 

Do you hear a beep or combination of beeps when you first turn the computer on? If so...please descibe what you hear.

 

Are you hearing alot of fan noise?

 

Have you heard a ticking or clicking noise from your tower?

 

If you are happy to go inside your tower please check that all connections are good. Reseat the RAM sticks, and check that the graphics card is seated properly.

 

Note: Be careful inside the tower...Gentle is good. Turn off at the socket but leave the plug in so an earth is maintained. Better still, wear a strap.

 

It is also possible that you have Malware. If that is the case then we have people here that are experts in that field who will help you.

 

Please check out the above first...

[Gilli99]

Browser sooo slow!

 

I have a Packard Bell PC with Win 2000 xp. It is 5 years old.

I use Mozilla Firefox browser and when I first installed it, it worked quickly for a couple of years. Now it can take anything up to 4 minutes to open. I've tried removing programmes that I dont need, I clean the hard drive and defrag regularly. Its okay for a day or two, then back to square one. :confused: I have Norton internet security.

Is it my PC's age or what? Any suggestions gratefully received. Thanks.