Member Avatar for Leo G

Hi all. I am having a pretty long delay when booting up my Dell Inspiron 9400. Had the problem once before and checkdisk/f took care of it. Not this time.

The computer boots up correctly and hangs after the desktop picture is displayed but before my icons get displayed. After a minute or so it just continues on as if nothing was wrong and boots normally.

I ran BootVis and the last program to load before the delay is WMIPRVSE.EXE.

I have checked and it is the correct file and it is not a virus that is being called up.

Here is the BootVis Graph.


[img]http://fototime.com/AA046F37769A60F/orig.jpg[/img]

Thanks

Edited by Leo G because: n/a
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Member Avatar for rubberman

You also need to scan your disc for bad sectors. They may be readable after a few retries, so checkdisk/f may still succeed, even though the disc is starting to go off the road.

Member Avatar for Leo G

New disk. I did a clone and this is when the problems started with the boot delay. But I have figured out what the issue is. I used MSCONFIG and disabled all the services and added them back in until the problem occurred. It turned out to be the
shell hardware detection service. I have disabled it and now I have a normal boot with no delay.

The shell hardware detection service is what detects and does the autorun on various devices like the CD and card readers and USB drives.

It would be nice to have it working again. How do I reinstall that service so it is corrected?

Member Avatar for rubberman

Probably the new drive doesn't have the same "signature" (configuration, size, whatever) as the old one, so possibly the shell hardware detection service saved some of this information about the boot drive when the system was originally installed, and now is taking its time to decide that everything is ok to boot. These are probably registry entries. Which ones are relevant I have no clue. When you cloned the drive, are you sure it was EXACTLY the same as the original drive? Or is it bigger, a different manufacturer, or ANYTHING that may differ between them? And how did you clone the system? Details please.

Member Avatar for Leo G

The drive is entirely different. The old one was a Samsung 100GB and the new one is a WD 250GB. I used SATA Wire EZ Gig IV to transfer the system and data.

Member Avatar for jbennet

Is there a copy protected disk in the drive?

If i have e.g. a game in my dvd drive, I hang for ages at the same point - I assume this is due to this "shell hardware detection service"

Member Avatar for rubberman

Well, I've never had problems with Apricot's products in the past, but that was long past. I take it, from looking at their web site, that this tool is freeware? I wasn't able to find a price, and it seems to allow unencumbered downloads. Did you run the tool from the .exe installer, or did you run it from the CD ISO image? If from CD, did you remove the CD from the drive? Are there any CD's or DVD's in the drive?

Member Avatar for Leo G

It wasn't the free version. It was cheap though $25 for the CD and the cable. I booted up with the CD with the original drive in the computer and the clean drive connected to the USB cable dongle that they supplied. I have a Dell computer which has a hidden partition on it for the media operation. But the program has a box that I checked off that eliminates that partition. I did have 2 bad sectors when I did the transfer and it told me that the clone failed, but it worked fine other than those 2 sector errors (2048 bytes) It is always possible that the file was there and got corrupted.

Member Avatar for rubberman

Ok. Your OS is probably looking for the recovery partition, that is the "hidden" partition, which allows you to recover if your OS is munged for some reason. Are these Sata drivers, or are they older IDE drives? I'm guessing IDE...

Member Avatar for Leo G

No, the recovery partition was transfered. They are both SATA drives. The Media partition that Dell puts on their computers is what has been eliminated.

You can see what hell they put you through with this hidden partition

http://www.goodells.net/dellrestore/

Member Avatar for rubberman

Sorry, I have been using Dell computers for years, but I'm not familiar with that one! What do they store there? DRM stuff?

Member Avatar for Leo G

I have an Inspiron 9400. It has two start buttons. One of them starts up the computer and all of its functions. The other starts up the CD drive and whatever it takes to just watch movies or listed to music, no computer functions at all. The only time I've ever used it was when I went, wonder what this button does. Other than that I use the laptop as a computer. That is what the hidden partition contains.

Edited by Leo G because: n/a
Member Avatar for rubberman

Ok. I thought maybe that's what it was for, but then I never have used a system with that feature! Sounds like something you can live without. Also, there is the distinct possibility that since this media-OS would have to support various DRM functions, it may have been made uncopyable by creating a couple of "bad sectors" that only their software could read/decode, thus preventing it from being cloned. It would not be the first time this has been the case, and there are any number of examples of copy-protected CD's and DVD's that utilize that technique!

So, that takes us back to the registry issue, in fixing it so that the software in question doesn't barf on the missing partition.

Member Avatar for Leo G

Well, the computer doesn't really know about the HPA. It is designed that way. The only way to get to the HPA is through the MRB LBA 3 and then it opens it up. Otherwise it is totally hidden from the system, non existent. But I can see it being a registry issue. How do we start?

Member Avatar for rubberman

Start Googling, visiting the MS and Dell user forums, and such for a start.

Member Avatar for rubberman

Googling the terms "Windows shell hardware detection boot time" results in a number of possibly useful posts. BTW, I don't suppose you have Alcohol 120% installed on your system? I found one posting that indicates it (which installs virtual CD/DVD drives) can interact with the shell hardware detection service to cause this problem. Just looking at unlikely possibilities. FWIW, I use Alcohol 120 on my Windows systems - best CD/DVD burner I've found for Windows, and for mounting ISO and other disc images in virtual drives.

Member Avatar for Leo G

No, I don't use Alcohol 120. Lets see if Google can save the day.

Member Avatar for rubberman

No, I don't use Alcohol 120. Lets see if Google can save the day.

Had to ask! :-)

Member Avatar for Leo G

OK, this is weird. I enabled the Shell Hardware Detection because I found a utility that might fix the issue. Only thine is that it needed to be enabled for it to do its thing. So I enabled it and rebooted and it booted quick. I had a camera memory card in the slot when I booted it, haven't a clue if that had something to do with it. Sometimes I shut the computer down with the card in there and then remove it, other times I leave it in. Depends on if I need the camera or not. Still clueless if this has anything to do with it.

Either that or just activating the MS Autofix utility might have done it without running it to the end.

But as of now I have the SHD enabled and the boot time is normal. So I guess this is solved.

Until it starts to do it again. But at least I will know where to look next time.

Edited by Leo G because: n/a
Member Avatar for rubberman

Well, from what I read there for AutoFix, this is not an uncommon situation. Glad you are back to "normal". Myself, I only run Windows when I absolutely have to. Mostly I run Linux, and happier for it, for sure! :-)

Member Avatar for Leo G

The problem was more a head game than anything. I use hibernate as a habit and it had no effect on that. It was just one of those things that I know is wrong with the computer in the back of my mind. I only need to reboot on rare occasions and it is mostly due to me abruptly removing my cell phone when I am using it as a modem without disabling it. Then I can't reconnect it because the driver gets corrupted and won't reinitialize. Other than that hibernation works great and that is how I get into the computer.

But is just that little annoying fact that everything isn't peaches and cream in computer land.

Edited by Leo G because: n/a
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