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318347
XPS 8700 suddenly slow rebooting and starting
My previously speedy Dell 8700 with 12GB ram has suddenly slowed to a crawl when rebooting or starting up. The problem occurs before any hard drive activity starts. So, when I reboot, after the shutdown procedure occurs, the monitor goes into sleep mode (amber), the white light on the tower's power button remains on. The computer is then silent for about five minutes before the monitor comes alive, the disk activity light comes on, and the startup procedure occurs. From that point, the startup is speedy.
If I completely power down, when I boot up, the power light turns white, the screen displays a Dell logo in a circle. There is no caterpillar going in a circle for approximately five minutes. There is no disk activity. Suddenly, after sitting there, the caterpillar appears, and the computer boots up speedily from that point. Basically, the Dell logo without caterpillar is taking several minutes when it used to take a couple of seconds. If I hit F12, it won't beep until after that five minutes is over. So, the problem is very early on in the boot process, I would guess.
I have shut down the computer, pulled out the plug. Removed all USB cords. Held the power button down for thirty seconds, then re-inserted all cords, and powered back up. That did not seem to solve the issue.
I have BIOS A03 that came installed on this machine which was purchased almost exactly one month ago. I haven't attempted to update the BIOS in fear that I might make things worse since the computer was fast a week or so ago.
The online diagnostics refuses to run. Have not knowingly changed anything in BIOS settings. Have not run diagnostics from F12, but will do so. Cannot see how to turn on verbose POST.
chucko6166
26 Posts
1
December 24th, 2013 17:00
See my similar thread with a couple of possible solutions (does not sound like your issue but maybe there is some common ground there):
http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/desktop/f/3514/t/19537836.aspx
RoHe
10 Elder
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44.3K Posts
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December 23rd, 2013 11:00
Try clearing BIOS:
CarlSTex
9 Posts
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December 23rd, 2013 20:00
After following procedure, it something about BIOS reset and prompted me to hit F1 to continue or F2 to enter setup. I hit F1, and it booted rather quickly. Next reboot, it was back to five minutes before HD activity and spinning caterpillar.
Updated BIOS to A06 as well. Did not change situation.
RoHe
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44.3K Posts
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December 24th, 2013 09:00
What version of Windows?
Is Secure Boot enabled in BIOS?
Try booting with only mouse, monitor and keyboard connected.
CarlSTex
9 Posts
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December 24th, 2013 13:00
Version 8.1. Came with version 8, but upgraded several weeks ago. Problem does not coincide with upgrade, but could be something that has appened since. Problem is pre-OS, as it happens when I boot off Linux Live-CD, too. Pause occurs before Dell logo appears on warm reboot, in other words, blank screen for several minutes (monitor stays in standby mode). On cold boot, logo appears at power up, but caterpillar does not start for several minutes.
Secure boot is enabled currently, but have tried it both ways with same result. Tried with only keyboard, mouse, and monitor attached and same thing.
Ran full ePSA pre-boot assessment and everything passed.
RoHe
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December 24th, 2013 16:00
CarlSTex
9 Posts
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December 25th, 2013 06:00
Chuck, I've been thinking it wasn't related to O/S because I'd experienced it in Linux, but the symptoms seem so similar. I did update my wireless driver because my Bluetooth stopped working after upgrading to 8.1, so maybe this reboot problem has been around for a while and I haven't noticed.
I'm going to try your uninstall solution and see what I end up with. I'm also going to restore to a pre-upgrade image and see if that helps.
CarlSTex
9 Posts
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December 25th, 2013 08:00
Have not been able to successfully uninstall the "Dell WLAN and Bluetooth Client Installation" to test Chuck's solution. It gets stuck at 100%, then never finishes.
CarlSTex
9 Posts
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December 25th, 2013 18:00
I still don't quite understand how a WLAN/Bluetooth driver can affect booting speed this way. It would even affect booting off Linux Live CD. I'm scratching my head.
CarlSTex
9 Posts
1
December 25th, 2013 18:00
After several reboots, and system restores, I was able to completely remove the Dell Wireless Client software, and lo-and-behold, after removing it and the device, the device is magically back, and yet the slow reboot is fixed. I had noticed that my BlueTooth was not working right after I upgraded to Windows 8.1, and one of the troubleshooting tips I found on the web was to check for new drivers. I installed the drivers for the WLAN/Bluetooth, and I guess I didn't notice at the time the reboot being slow. I could have been that way for quite some time since I don't regularly reboot. I'm not sure if it was removing the device or uninstalling the "Dell WLAN and Bluetooth Client Installation" but it sure seems to be booting fine now.
Definitely something that 8.1 doesn't like about that package, although I thought I had filtered on Windows 8.1 when getting the downloads.
gartaud
50 Posts
1
December 25th, 2013 20:00
Thanks for the tip!!!
I had the exact same issue (purchased computer a few weeks ago, updated to Windows 8.1, everything OK, wrapped it up as gift for xmas... and today the thing was super slow to shutdown/restart... after it found and installed the problematic update I presume)
I also could not uninstall the Dell program linked to the Wi-Fi/Bluetooth 1703 card at first (got stuck towards the end), so I killed the uninstaller, then disabled the twin devices in Device Manager (the Bluetooth device and the Wi-Fi device), then restarted, then the uninstaller was able to run to the end.
Then I restarted again, then went back to Device Manager where I had to re-enable the Bluetooth device manually (was still disabled) but Wi-Fi device came back magically. Then did a final restart to make sure everything is OK.
Well everything is back to normal...
So it seems that the problem was an incompatibility between the Wi-Fi driver and the Bluetooth driver that both control the same piece of hardware?
Anyway thanks again for the tip!
canucks4life
4 Posts
0
January 4th, 2014 16:00
gymchair
5 Posts
4
January 16th, 2014 03:00
Thanks. I had the same issue in Windows 8.1. This solved it for me:
1) Control Panel: Device Manager: Bluetooth: "Dell Wireless 1703 Bluetooth"--Right Click: "Update Driver"
2) "Let me choose from a list of drivers on my PC"
3) Chose the previous "Dell Wireless 1703 Bluetooth" driver, (not the July 2013 one, but a 2012 one.)
Rebooted--Problem solved.
fenoywb
14 Posts
2
January 18th, 2014 20:00
This worked perfectly for me on my 8700 but also on my wife's 8500 both of which had the slow boot/slow shut down blues. Rolled the driver back to the 2012 one and problem solved.
dlowbar
1 Message
0
January 19th, 2014 06:00
Strange problem. I agree, it is hard to understand how this causes the problem but backdating the driver resolves it. I guess we wait for a new driver with a 2014 date.