MEPIS Community Forum

Really slow to boot

machine
HP Pavillion zv5000 last bios update changed to zv5200
AMD Athlon 64 2000 MHz
Memory 1024MB Vidmem 64MB
HD Toshiba MK8025GAS-(PM)

Using Mepis 11.0.12_32 install with large DVD. Here is how the HD is partitiod:
sda1=root 14.74 GiB
sda2=home 57.72 GiB
sda3=swap 2.07 GiB

I have booted too many times to count, trying to see what shows on some of the screens. This is what happens.

Power press to turn on
1st screen comes up fast, what I could see by pausing and quickly goes to 2nd screen.
GRUB Loading stage1.5.


GRUB loading, please wait...
?? another line I could not see or pause on

2nd screen menu comes up - still fast
mepis at sda1, newest kernel
mepis at sda1, kernel 2.6.36-1-mepis-smp
memtest

can let it time out or hit enter here

3rd screen - once booted KDE Partition Manger shows ext3 instead of ext2fs
root (hd0,0)
Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83
kernel /boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/sda1 nomce quiet splash vga=788
[Linux-bzImage, setup=0x3a00, size=0x321b20]
initrd /boot/initrd.img
boot
?? not sure if there is anything else on this screen

4th screen - here is where the delay is
Loading, please wait...
_ =flashing then steddy for 60 seconds then starts flashing again

I have used a stop watch and here's the average times.
maybe 1-3 seconds from a flashing curser to a steady curser
it takes 60 seconds (avg) to change back to a flashing curser and then
another 12 seconds to have the splash screen show, 40-50 seconds for the
login menu to show.

Any way to find out what's wrong?

My desk top takes only 30-40 seconds from power on to the login screen.
THANKS

In Synaptic, see if you have the 'mdadm' package installed, and Completely Remove if you do. Unless you're running a RAID array, you don't need it, and it can cause extreme boot delays.

That's not the problem as it's not installed.

could just be that your filesystem is due to be checked and it's running a filesystems check. especially since it's a notebook, if it's frequently booted without being plugged in any scheduled, or due, filesystem check would be delayed until the system is plugged in and then booted.

Do not think that is it, as when I used the stop watch to time things, I shut down or restarted at lease 5 times in an hour. Since the install of Mepis the boot time has been this long. Before Mepis was installed the hard drive was wiped which took almost a day. I then ran some programs to stress the system, memory, hard drive etc. before installing Mepis. I'm not one that wants instance on but this is too long.

Then something isn't right.

One more thought -- since this is a laptop, it might be looking for a wired connection when there isn't one, or a wireless connection where there isn't one.

There is nothing wrong with the wiping of the drive and how long it. This was a secure wipe. Overwrites of a total of 36 times, including specific patterns for MFM, RLL(1,7), and RLL(2,7) encoding:
4 alternating passes of strong random data.
27 passes using a variety of patterns designed specifically for Rll(1,7), RLL(2,7), and MFM encoded drives.
4 alternating pass of strong random data.
1 pass of zeros.

As you can see, I should of said that it was a secure wipe instead of just a drive wipe. After the wipe I used Spinrite to test the hard drive. I wanted it to break something before I installed Mepis. The install went perfect, everything worked like it should except for the boot times.

Well I hooked up a wired connection, did 3 shut downs and 3 restarts, nothing changed. I've had no trouble with wireless, it is setup for manual connection.

Hit alt +f1 during boot and watch for anything that failed