PC suddenly extremely slow at boot, Starting Windows takes for ever

Hello there,

I will try to analyze and give all the info I have so far on my situation.


The problem started 3 days ago when I was playing World of Warcraft and I was alt-tabing (nothing special, just ordinary stuff). After a load screen, where the game normally starts loading stuff, the alt-tabing was inresponsive and while I was in desktop, clicking WoW icon had no effect, like I wasn't clicking it. Soon I realized Firefox wasn't working as intended, so I pressed the reset button on my case. The pc gave me an error that, if i remember correctly, was that no boot device found. I played a little with plugging-unplugging my USB devices and the problem fixed after about 10 minutes. All good since yesterday afternoon.


So yesterday I got the exact same problem while I was playing an another game, but still at loading screen. The computer boots (from zero) very slow, even getting to "Starting Windows" screen takes a minute, and until I see the windows icon (the one about the SW text) 15 minutes pass. I left home and left the pc at that icon, and when I was back it was at login screen (weird because I only have 1 account without password so I don't ever get there). I pressed my account icon and after around 10 seconds (notice the time for just pressing a button) I got the "Welcome" screen, with the circle moving smoothly. I tried to use my Windows installation disc to find a boot problem, however it takes for ever to find a problem. Also tried booting in safe mode, but it takes a long time to load (haven't left it enough hours to load, I think it got stuck at some point).

My initial thought was of course a HDD failure. I have tried removing the ram sticks, unplugged everything but the DVI cable, played a little with the HDD sata cables, but nothing. The only thing I haven't tested is PSU.

All the few operations I have managed to see (like the SW screen or the clicking) take a huge amount of time. I suspect it might not be a boot, or even HDD related, error but something else. The problem so far is the speed. The only thing I have seen to be working normally is navigating in the BIOS menu (which is graphical, I have an Asus motherboard). Also notice that just before I manually rebooted my PC, alt-tabing was inresponsive (not crashing, just very slow probably).

I am going to test my HDD to another PC and will post results here. By the way, I am not sure if I could connect a HDD from another pc to boot Windows from there, can I do that?


** EDIT ** : chkdsk reported no bad sectors

PC specs:

Windows 7 64-bit
Intel i5 2400
2x2GB Kingston 1333 MHz
Asus GTX 560 Ti
OCZ 700W
2 HDDs (Windows at WD 5400 rpm, 500gb one)


PS: Big post, thanks for reading it!