Never EVER discard anything!

This thread is not to ask for help, but just to tell something that happened to me today and to alert your guys that EVERYTHING is possible!

Before my lunch a client called me complaining that his almost 10 years old machine was slow. She said:

— The computer is super slow SINCE THE LAST TIME YOU TOUCHED IT! Now it takes 2 minutes to load Windows and before it took like 2-3 seconds.

I swear God she said that.



Since I know well this client and know that she rarely express herself correctly I was to her place to see what was really going on. Then, when there, I got what she meant. Actually the computer was taking 2 minutes to START loading Windows: it was stuck forever in the BIOS splash screen. Then first I tried to explain that it hasn't nothing to do with what I did the last time (I installed SP1 in her Windows), but go try to explain the difference between OS and BIOS to someone... Oh well!!!

So now begins the real story...

Since her computer has password in BIOS and she doesn't know it (and since I didn't want to reset her BIOS) I couldn't get into. Also it didn't seem to be a BIOS problem anyway, so I just removed the case hood and started to look around. Thinking of a bad contact due to the dirt conditions inside I started to remove and re-plug stuff but the problem just persisted. I stayed on this "self tail pursuit" for almost two hours and at the end I was convinced that it could be a PS problem. Because I am not fixing hardware currently I explained to her what I thought was going on and asked her to bring computer to a repair shop.

When I was already picking my stuff to go away, I noticed that her HP multi-functional was blinking the power button like crazy and in the tiny display there was a message telling that cartridges were bad. Then I looked at the USB cable connected to the computer but immediately I thought "It CANNOT have any relationship". But just for fun, I disconnected the printer USB cable and poked the computer power button. Guess what. Two seconds in the BIOS screen and Windows started to load. Then I repeat the test a couple times, and everything was normal. Then I plugged again the printer cable and... BIOS screen stuck again!



Today this old dog learned a new trick: never EVER discard anything.

AddRAM said:

Ya but did you fix the problem ?

Yup, I disconnected the USB cable from the printer (it wasn't being used anyway) and the problem has gone.

AddRAM said:

I don`t see how a printer has anyting to do with Windows booting up.

Neither do I till today.

AddRAM said:

Was the boot order in the Bios set correctly ?

If you are thinking the same as I did, yes, there is a big chance that the BIOS be set to boot from USB as primary option and that the computer was trying to boot from printer. Weird but possible. Unfortunately I couldn't check it because there was a pwd in the BIOS, the owner didn't know the pwd and I didn't want to reset her CMOS (actually she didn't authorized me to).

As a some printers has SD card readers, I would say that USB boot is as the fist boot option. As it doesn't find what to boot it keep trying.

It may be although it's weird to me. All computers I saw till the date just spit a message saying tha boot wasn't found when it happens instead to 'keep trying'. It doesn't really make sense to me. Also after some time stuck, the Windows is eventually loaded. Sometimes it takes several minutes to happen other times a few seconds...

AddRAM said:

The same thing will happen if you have a PC set to boot from the network, it will keep trying and trying

I didn't know that. This old dog just learned another new trick!