Laptop takes three hours to boot!

[CaptainSEO]

Hi

A friend of mine asked me to help with his laptop which has the Interpol virus/malware.

It takes hours to boot. After pressing the on button, there is no activity apart from a small green LED for hours. It's like it's taking ages to POST. Once it decides to fire up, it's fine, wkaes from sleep quickly, but a reboot take hours.

Any idea what this is?

 

[tjg79]

You should boot to safe mode and run antivirus programs and Windows Defender. Also try a restore point. Also, run system file checker, SFC /SCANNOW from the command prompt by starting cmd as an administrator. Then run chkdsk. You should also check the hdd with a hdd utility such as Seatools.

If everything fails to resolve the issue, back up all your data, delete the disk partitions, wipe the disk with a low level format and reload the os.

 

[gregrocker]

Work through the Troubleshooting Steps for Win7

Check for infection, Get a Clean Boot right away then reboot to see what that does, then proceed with the rest of the steps. Report back results.

We have a trace that can be run if the problem isn't resolved by going over the install thoroughly.

 

[CaptainSEO]

I'm intending to boot to safe and use rkill to kill the processes then an anti malware solution recommended for fixing the Interpol.

What with the computer taking so looooong to boot and there being nothing of value on the hard drive, I'm now thinking I should just boot to Win7 disc and do a clean install.

 

[CaptainSEO]

It won't boot now. just sites there with a green LED on, doing nothing!

 

[tjg79]

You could have had a hard drive failure. Create a bootable device such as a USB or CD and then boot to see if you can read the hard disk. You'll likely have to adjust your settings in the BIOS.

 

[gregrocker]

Have you started with the steps in Troubleshooting Windows 7 Failure to Start.

None of these require starting WIndows, so whether it will start is irrelevant to running them.

Check if the HD is recognized in BIOS setup. If not then reinstall or replace it. If so it shows how to test it and the other hardware in the steps.