J <dreadpiratej...@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Fri, Jul 30, 2010 at 18:45, zed <z...@zed.net.nz> wrote:
> > I have an elderly friend using one of these machines and I've just
> > installed LinuxMint for her.  She was using WindowsXP and the machine
> > was taking nigh on 4 minutes to boot.  Mint was installed in the hope
> > that this would cure the problem.  Alas! it is still a four minute boot
> > time.
> >
> > Following the advice of the helpful members on linux-thinkpad, I did a
> > dmesg from the terminal.  The output looks like this:
> 
> [SNIP]
> 
> >
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> > Deciphering the result of the dmesg command, is beyond my level of
> > competence, so I seek your assistance to point out any errors which
> > could lead to a slow boot time., and what I can do about them.As a
> > matter of interest, the machine is a 2.53GHz. although I do not know the
> > model number.
> 
> Looks like you've got < 1GB RAM, 1 single core P4 at 2.6GHz and
> Hyperthreading disabled.
> 
> You've got a WD WD400BB-23FJ 40GB hard disk (ATA)
> 
> And looking further... your second hard disk is bad.  That's causing your
> slowdown:
> 
> 
> [   80.816025] ata2: lost interrupt (Status 0x58) [   80.820003] ata2:
> drained 32768 bytes to clear DRQ. [   80.883112] ata2.01: exception Emask
> 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x6 frozen [   80.883119] ata2.01: failed
> command: READ DMA [   80.883127] ata2.01: cmd
> c8/00:08:00:00:00/00:00:00:00:00/f0 tag 0 dma 4096 in [   80.883129]
> res 40/00:03:00:00:00/00:00:00:00:00/a0 Emask 0x4 (timeout) [
> 80.883133] ata2.01: status: { DRDY } [   80.883166] ata2: soft resetting
> link [   81.053407] ata2.00: configured for UDMA/33 [   81.076389]
> ata2.01: configured for UDMA/100 [   81.076608] ata2.01: device reported
> invalid CHS sector 0
> 
> That runs from about 80 seconds in to 174 seconds in, which accounts for
> about 1:34 seconds of boot time.  Unplug that hard disk and see if it
> speeds up the boot time...

Thank you for the prompt response.  The friend in questions lives some way
away.  As soon as I am able, I will visit her and check out your advice.

Regards

Zed.

-- 
zed

Can anyone remember when the times were not hard, and money not scarce?  

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