Need help on lag of 5+ minutes to POST on PC power up

[imported_Jubei]

Need some advice.

Family member's PC is acting up. When powered on, the PC sometimes takes around 5 minutes to get to BIOS (and for monitor to power on), once that happens, Windows XP loads normally and PC acts normal. Since the lag is before the POST, I would tend to think the OS is ok - anyway I did run a full virus scan (AVG Free) and a malware scan (Spybot) and PC is clean.

Thing is this does not happen everything the PC is turned on. Maybe the lag before POST happens once in every 5 power ons. Thus I am suspecting it is a hardware issue. Or could it be an unstable PSU? If so, what can I do to check?

PC is :
MSI K8NGM2-FID
AMD Athlon 64 3200+
1GB Kingston RAM
Compro TV Tuner card
Cooler Master PSU that came with the case

Thanks in advance.

 

[mpilchfamily]

This could be a power issue. It may be taking the PSU thaqt amount of time to get up to power and turn the system on. If thats the case then the PSu needs to be replaced ASAP. It could also be that the motherboard itself is going bad causing the delay. You won't know for sure till you have traded parts out to test it.

 

[imported_Jubei]

I think it is a hardware issue since I don't get post for quite a few minutes and monitor does even power on from standby. Actually doubt it is the PSU since the lights on the front panel of the case do go one (both red and green ones) - hard drives seem to be spinning too.

Damn, anyway, maybe it is time to start looking in new components as it is a single core machine - means new mobo, PSU, CPU and RAM - can probably re-use the rest.

Thanks for the input!

 

[mechBgon]

Also, what brand of hard drive does the system use? If it happens to be a Western Digital with a 40-pin IDE connector (as opposed to SATA), and if it's on its own data cable, then remove its jumper cap so it's set to the special Single Master setting. Sometimes this resolves hangs.

If those conditions don't apply, then never mind (except you could still disconnect the drive and see if the system POSTs normally with the drive disconnected).

 

[imported_Jubei]

Using WD drives, but there are all SATA drives. Besides, even if hard drive is faulty, PC should still POST or at least monitor should still power on right?

Anyway thanks for the advice!

 

[Modelworks]

Unplug all the drive connectors and see if it post faster. Some bios hang when trying to identify hard drives and have a long timeout before they continue.