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#11
Hum what I might suggest abyssal is to get that drive out and if you have access to another machine install it using a USB gadget or into the machine it self, and try Patition Magic to see what is on the drive.
Another thing before that tough may be to run a Seatools Hard drive test on the drive and you could also try a disk surface test with Partition Wizard. You can also see what is on the disk with it too.
SeaTools | Seagate
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The boot time is very wrong and mate I personally would not wait for more than ten minutes as there is something terribly wrong with some hardware somewhere and I would be very suspicious of the CPU - especially the thermal paste. If the machine is more than say four years old then like my best laptop I have - the thermal could be well and truly hardened and is not doing the the job it was meant to. In fact I would go so far as to say it may be insulating or keeping the CPU from contact with the heatsink (and heat pipes)and hence the constant shut down and extreme boot time.
Sorry my friend but time to have a very close look at the internals but try the tests first.