M2NPV-VM Slow Boot

On Fri, 02 Nov 2007 21:25:12 -0500, Don in San Antonio <don RemoveThis @sa.com>
had a flock of green cheek conures squawk out:

>New Asus M2NPV-VM board takes 2 minutes to boot into WinXP SP2 then
>something goes on in the background for another 30 seconds. Effectively
>it takes 2.5 minutes before WinXP is ready to run a program. This is
>the first board I've owned with on-board video - could that be the
>cause? I have two older Gigabyte boards that boot in 90 seconds or less.
>
>The new Asus board has an AMD 64 X2 3800+ processor, 2 gig of Kingston
>800 ram and a Seagate 80 gig SATA drive. I tried a Western Digital
>Raptor drive (10,000 RPM) but it didn't make any noticeable improvement.
> I've turned off everything I could in startup using MSCONFIG, but that
>didn't help. I turned off all non-Microsoft services and still no help.
> Turning off all services seemed to help, but the system won't run very
>well with all services turned off.
>
>I'm looking for some bench marks from other M2NPV-VM owners. Is anyone
>getting a fast boot with the MB? Other than he slow startup, this has
>been a great board. Thanks Don

It doesn't take that long to boot XP Home w/sp2 on the one I have with
a 4200. The only time I've ever had long boot times was with
Symantec's bloated Systemworks software. I haven't used that buggy
junk in years.

Stephen
--
 >> Stay informed about: M2NPV-VM Slow Boot 

Stephen said the following on 11/3/2007 8:52 AM:
> On Fri, 02 Nov 2007 21:25:12 -0500, Don in San Antonio <don.TakeThisOut@sa.com>
> had a flock of green cheek conures squawk out:
>
>> New Asus M2NPV-VM board takes 2 minutes to boot into WinXP SP2 then
>> something goes on in the background for another 30 seconds. Effectively
>> it takes 2.5 minutes before WinXP is ready to run a program. This is
>> the first board I've owned with on-board video - could that be the
>> cause? I have two older Gigabyte boards that boot in 90 seconds or less.
>>
>> The new Asus board has an AMD 64 X2 3800+ processor, 2 gig of Kingston
>> 800 ram and a Seagate 80 gig SATA drive. I tried a Western Digital
>> Raptor drive (10,000 RPM) but it didn't make any noticeable improvement.
>> I've turned off everything I could in startup using MSCONFIG, but that
>> didn't help. I turned off all non-Microsoft services and still no help.
>> Turning off all services seemed to help, but the system won't run very
>> well with all services turned off.
>>
>> I'm looking for some bench marks from other M2NPV-VM owners. Is anyone
>> getting a fast boot with the MB? Other than he slow startup, this has
>> been a great board. Thanks Don
>
> It doesn't take that long to boot XP Home w/sp2 on the one I have with
> a 4200. The only time I've ever had long boot times was with
> Symantec's bloated Systemworks software. I haven't used that buggy
> junk in years.
>
> Stephen

Finally a reply! Thanks Stephen. Are you using the on-board video or
do you have another video card installed? Can you put a number on your
boot time?

I have Symantec's AntiVirus and Zone Alarm Pro installed, but I don't
think that's the problem. I've turned them off one at a time and it
didn't seem to speed up the boot process. Thanks Don
 >> Stay informed about: M2NPV-VM Slow Boot 

Rob said the following on 11/3/2007 12:07 PM:
> Don in San Antonio wrote:
>> New Asus M2NPV-VM board takes 2 minutes to boot into WinXP SP2 then
>> something goes on in the background for another 30 seconds.
>> Effectively it takes 2.5 minutes before WinXP is ready to run a
>> program. This is the first board I've owned with on-board video -
>> could that be the cause? I have two older Gigabyte boards that boot
>> in 90 seconds or less.
>>
>> The new Asus board has an AMD 64 X2 3800+ processor, 2 gig of Kingston
>> 800 ram and a Seagate 80 gig SATA drive. I tried a Western Digital
>> Raptor drive (10,000 RPM) but it didn't make any noticeable
>> improvement. I've turned off everything I could in startup using
>> MSCONFIG, but that didn't help. I turned off all non-Microsoft
>> services and still no help. Turning off all services seemed to help,
>> but the system won't run very well with all services turned off.
>>
>> I'm looking for some bench marks from other M2NPV-VM owners. Is
>> anyone getting a fast boot with the MB? Other than he slow startup,
>> this has been a great board. Thanks Don
> Don,
> I'm running a X2 4200+ w/2G RAM and the bloated program Stephen
> mentioned amongst others. I get to my desktop in about 50 sec. and
> fully resting system by about 80 sec. I run a PCI-E Graphics card but
> don't remember the onboard slowing it up that bad. Have you got the
> latest drivers from nVidia?
> Rob
Rob,
I just updated to the latest nVidia driver version 6.14.11.6371 release
date 9/17/2007. Not sure it helped much, but should know after one or
two more boots. I'm interested in a good graphics card for my system.
I'd like one that was quiet and doesn't cost too much. My whole
objective in building this new system was build something quiet. Can
you recommend a good one?

On another subject - Have you used the sleep mode? It shuts everything
down but power to the memory. Wakeup is blazingly fast, three seconds
or less. This lets me get around the long boot times. I discovered
that the system will not wake up properly if video memory was set higher
than 32 mb in the BIOS. I asked Asus tech support and they just said to
use the default settings.
Don




That said, I love the sleep mode. I had used hibernate, but sleep is
even better. I discovered that the system would n


whether a graphics card would help. I'm interested in a graphics card
if that will speed things up. What PCI-E graphics card do you have? I
built my system for quietness. Does the WinX sleep mode work with your
card. Does the card make much noise? I'm close to buying a video card
to see if it helps.
 >> Stay informed about: M2NPV-VM Slow Boot 

> Rob,
> I just updated to the latest nVidia driver version 6.14.11.6371
> release date 9/17/2007. Not sure it helped much, but should know
> after one or two more boots. I'm interested in a good graphics card
> for my system. I'd like one that was quiet and doesn't cost too much.
> My whole objective in building this new system was build something
> quiet. Can you recommend a good one?
>
> On another subject - Have you used the sleep mode? It shuts
> everything down but power to the memory. Wakeup is blazingly fast,
> three seconds or less. This lets me get around the long boot times.
> I discovered that the system will not wake up properly if video memory
> was set higher than 32 mb in the BIOS. I asked Asus tech support and
> they just said to use the default settings.
> Don
>
>
>
>
> That said, I love the sleep mode. I had used hibernate, but sleep
> is even better. I discovered that the system would n
>
>
> whether a graphics card would help. I'm interested in a graphics
> card if that will speed things up. What PCI-E graphics card do you
> have? I built my system for quietness. Does the WinX sleep mode work
> with your card. Does the card make much noise? I'm close to buying a
> video card to see if it helps.
Don,
Actually, I was referring to the Mobo drivers. Latest from nVidia is
8.26. I think Asus gave up with 8.24!
But graphics driver is good, too. I'm using a PNY GeForce 7600GT/256mb
RAM, which I think has been discontinued. It did help my system run a
good bit snappier (gets past the shared memory bottleneck). It's got a
fan but doesn't make much noise to me. I don't use sleep mode for my
purposes, but yes it is a quick return if your not away for too long.
The electric company can always use a few extra pennies! Have you run
Memtest86+ to make sure the memory is 100% error free? I'd hate to be
working on something, not have it saved and go into sleep mode, only to
wake up with corrupted data.
Rob
 >> Stay informed about: M2NPV-VM Slow Boot 

Rob said the following on 11/3/2007 9:54 PM:
>> Rob,
>> I just updated to the latest nVidia driver version 6.14.11.6371
>> release date 9/17/2007. Not sure it helped much, but should know
>> after one or two more boots. I'm interested in a good graphics card
>> for my system. I'd like one that was quiet and doesn't cost too much.
>> My whole objective in building this new system was build something
>> quiet. Can you recommend a good one?
>>
>> On another subject - Have you used the sleep mode? It shuts
>> everything down but power to the memory. Wakeup is blazingly fast,
>> three seconds or less. This lets me get around the long boot times.
>> I discovered that the system will not wake up properly if video memory
>> was set higher than 32 mb in the BIOS. I asked Asus tech support and
>> they just said to use the default settings.
>> Don
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> That said, I love the sleep mode. I had used hibernate, but sleep
>> is even better. I discovered that the system would n
>>
>>
>> whether a graphics card would help. I'm interested in a graphics
>> card if that will speed things up. What PCI-E graphics card do you
>> have? I built my system for quietness. Does the WinX sleep mode work
>> with your card. Does the card make much noise? I'm close to buying a
>> video card to see if it helps.
> Don,
> Actually, I was referring to the Mobo drivers. Latest from nVidia is
> 8.26. I think Asus gave up with 8.24!
> But graphics driver is good, too. I'm using a PNY GeForce 7600GT/256mb
> RAM, which I think has been discontinued. It did help my system run a
> good bit snappier (gets past the shared memory bottleneck). It's got a
> fan but doesn't make much noise to me. I don't use sleep mode for my
> purposes, but yes it is a quick return if your not away for too long.
> The electric company can always use a few extra pennies! Have you run
> Memtest86+ to make sure the memory is 100% error free? I'd hate to be
> working on something, not have it saved and go into sleep mode, only to
> wake up with corrupted data.
> Rob

Rob,
Updating the nVidia driver didn't seem to help much. As for the
Motherboard, I have Phoenix BIOS version 0901 released 05/08/2007. I
think it's the latest.

I have left the system in sleep mode for 4 or 5 hours with no memory
loss problems. As for the electric power company making money, there
can't be much power involved in just keeping memory alive. No fans run
during sleep mode and the hard drive is stopped. Even the CPU fan
stops. The power light flashes to let me know it's still on. I agree,
that leaving it in sleep mode over night might be a bit risky. I always
save whatever I'm doing before putting the computer into sleep mode.

I'm going to look into getting an inexpensive video card. I'll post
something here in the news group if that solves my slow boot problem.
Don
 >> Stay informed about: M2NPV-VM Slow Boot 

On Sat, 03 Nov 2007 09:38:25 -0500, Don in San Antonio <don.RemoveThis@sa.com>
had a flock of green cheek conures squawk out:

>
>Finally a reply! Thanks Stephen. Are you using the on-board video or
>do you have another video card installed? Can you put a number on your
>boot time?

The on board video. It boots in about a minute.

I've found the boot time through the ceasing of hard drive activity
depends on the software installed. The more that runs in the
background and tray, the longer it takes.

Stephen
--
 >> Stay informed about: M2NPV-VM Slow Boot 

Stephen said the following on 11/5/2007 12:17 PM:
> On Sat, 03 Nov 2007 09:38:25 -0500, Don in San Antonio <don.RemoveThis@sa.com>
> had a flock of green cheek conures squawk out:
>
>> Finally a reply! Thanks Stephen. Are you using the on-board video or
>> do you have another video card installed? Can you put a number on your
>> boot time?
>
> The on board video. It boots in about a minute.
>
> I've found the boot time through the ceasing of hard drive activity
> depends on the software installed. The more that runs in the
> background and tray, the longer it takes.
>
> Stephen

Stephen,

Thanks for the benchmark. I'll keep looking for what's causing my 2.5
minute boot time. If I ever figure it out, I'll post something here on
the news group. There may be others with the same problem.

Don
 >> Stay informed about: M2NPV-VM Slow Boot 

--
---AVG Certified Virus-Free---
"Don in San Antonio" <don.RemoveThis@sa.com> wrote in message
news:472bdbef$0$32519$4c368faf@roadrunner.com...
> New Asus M2NPV-VM board takes 2 minutes to boot into WinXP SP2 then
> something goes on in the background for another 30 seconds. Effectively
> it takes 2.5 minutes before WinXP is ready to run a program. This is the
> first board I've owned with on-board video - could that be the cause? I
> have two older Gigabyte boards that boot in 90 seconds or less.
>
> The new Asus board has an AMD 64 X2 3800+ processor, 2 gig of Kingston 800
> ram and a Seagate 80 gig SATA drive. I tried a Western Digital Raptor
> drive (10,000 RPM) but it didn't make any noticeable improvement. I've
> turned off everything I could in startup using MSCONFIG, but that didn't
> help. I turned off all non-Microsoft services and still no help. Turning
> off all services seemed to help, but the system won't run very well with
> all services turned off.
>
> I'm looking for some bench marks from other M2NPV-VM owners. Is anyone
> getting a fast boot with the MB? Other than he slow startup, this has
> been a great board. Thanks Don

52 second startup (with free AVG antivirus and Linksys wusb54g wireless
adapter fully loaded and operational)

22 second shutdown (with clear pagefile enabled)
 >> Stay informed about: M2NPV-VM Slow Boot 

"tom" <tom DeleteThis @hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:yJ4Yi.8215$gK1.2000@newsfe03.phx...
>
>
> --
> ---AVG Certified Virus-Free---
> "Don in San Antonio" <don DeleteThis @sa.com> wrote in message
> news:472bdbef$0$32519$4c368faf@roadrunner.com...
>> New Asus M2NPV-VM board takes 2 minutes to boot into WinXP SP2 then
>> something goes on in the background for another 30 seconds. Effectively
>> it takes 2.5 minutes before WinXP is ready to run a program. This is the
>> first board I've owned with on-board video - could that be the cause? I
>> have two older Gigabyte boards that boot in 90 seconds or less.
>>
>> The new Asus board has an AMD 64 X2 3800+ processor, 2 gig of Kingston
>> 800 ram and a Seagate 80 gig SATA drive. I tried a Western Digital
>> Raptor drive (10,000 RPM) but it didn't make any noticeable improvement.
>> I've turned off everything I could in startup using MSCONFIG, but that
>> didn't help. I turned off all non-Microsoft services and still no help.
>> Turning off all services seemed to help, but the system won't run very
>> well with all services turned off.
>>
>> I'm looking for some bench marks from other M2NPV-VM owners. Is anyone
>> getting a fast boot with the MB? Other than he slow startup, this has
>> been a great board. Thanks Don
>
> 52 second startup (with free AVG antivirus and Linksys wusb54g wireless
> adapter fully loaded and operational)
>
> 22 second shutdown (with clear pagefile enabled)
>
Thanks for the benchmark Tom. I'm still getting long boot times but my
shutdown times are close to yours. I have the same wireless router but with
Symantec Corporate and Zone Alarm Pro. I do get the windows screen with the
startmenu that seems to work for a few seconds at the 70-80 second point,
but then additional things start to load. This secondary loading lasts for
another 2 minutes.
 >> Stay informed about: M2NPV-VM Slow Boot 

Don R said the following on 11/18/2007 8:20 PM:
> "tom" <tom.TakeThisOut@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:yJ4Yi.8215$gK1.2000@newsfe03.phx...
>>
>> --
>> ---AVG Certified Virus-Free---
>> "Don in San Antonio" <don.TakeThisOut@sa.com> wrote in message
>> news:472bdbef$0$32519$4c368faf@roadrunner.com...
>>> New Asus M2NPV-VM board takes 2 minutes to boot into WinXP SP2 then
>>> something goes on in the background for another 30 seconds. Effectively
>>> it takes 2.5 minutes before WinXP is ready to run a program. This is the
>>> first board I've owned with on-board video - could that be the cause? I
>>> have two older Gigabyte boards that boot in 90 seconds or less.
>>>
>>> The new Asus board has an AMD 64 X2 3800+ processor, 2 gig of Kingston
>>> 800 ram and a Seagate 80 gig SATA drive. I tried a Western Digital
>>> Raptor drive (10,000 RPM) but it didn't make any noticeable improvement.
>>> I've turned off everything I could in startup using MSCONFIG, but that
>>> didn't help. I turned off all non-Microsoft services and still no help.
>>> Turning off all services seemed to help, but the system won't run very
>>> well with all services turned off.
>>>
>>> I'm looking for some bench marks from other M2NPV-VM owners. Is anyone
>>> getting a fast boot with the MB? Other than he slow startup, this has
>>> been a great board. Thanks Don
>> 52 second startup (with free AVG antivirus and Linksys wusb54g wireless
>> adapter fully loaded and operational)
>>
>> 22 second shutdown (with clear pagefile enabled)
>>
> Thanks for the benchmark Tom. I'm still getting long boot times but my
> shutdown times are close to yours. I have the same wireless router but with
> Symantec Corporate and Zone Alarm Pro. I do get the windows screen with the
> startmenu that seems to work for a few seconds at the 70-80 second point,
> but then additional things start to load. This secondary loading lasts for
> another 2 minutes.
>

The secondary loading turned out to be vsmon.exe a part of ZoneAlarm
Pro. I used Process Explorer to monitor cpu usage and found that
vsmon.exe would begin using 50% of the cpu time. I'm not sure why this
would freeze my system. It could have something to do with the AMD 64
X2 3800+ dual core processor. The solution was to download and install
the latest version of ZoneAlarm Pro, version 7.0.462.000.
 >> Stay informed about: M2NPV-VM Slow Boot