Windows 10: Dell XPS 8700 Long Boot Time - Remove CMOS Battery Speeds it Up

I have two identical Dell XPS 8700 for my kids. They use them mainly for steam games and Office 2016.

Both running the Windows 10 AU.

Today on one of them, by son said a message popped up and asked to stop a service and he clicked yes. Then all there was, was a gray screen and mouse pointer. He came and got me. The pointer would move but nothing else responded. So I did a power shut down. On reboot, the machine took around 40 seconds from seeing the dell logo to the sign on screen. This seemed very long. So I rebooted the other machine to see how long it takes, and it was only 3 seconds from the dell logo to the sign on screen.

I do not know if the long boot time has been going on or just started with this issue.

I ran sfc /scannow and it said no issues.

I remember in September 2015 ( a year ago) I had an issue with this machine where on power on, all I would get is the spinning dots at the Dell logo and it would not boot into windows. I even let it sit there for 24 hours and just spinning dots. I even tried new install of windows where the machine would let me install new windows, but after updates, the same thing happened with the spinning dots.

After a tons of troubleshooting, a dell tech recommended pulling the cmos battery. I did that and from then on it booted fine.

So since the long boot time did not seem right, I pulled the cmos battery again. waited 30 seconds, put it back in and booted into bios, change the clock (not sure if I had to but did), and then reboot and now after the dell logo it gets to the log in screen after a few seconds like the other 8700.

Any idea why this happened? Why I needed to pull the cmos battery to get the short boot times?

Both XPS 8700 machines are on an APC battery backup. Just curious if there is something defective with this particular machine that causes this issue where removing the CMOS battery solves it.

thanks

:)

 

Computer running very slow after Windows 10 upgrade

Dell XPS 8700 computer with 8 GB Ram originally running 8.1 was upgraded to windows 10. After a long installation process, system is up and running but it's very slow, incredibly slow. Any suggestions? I received no error messages!

 

Dell XPS 8500 upgrade from Win 8.1 Pro to Win 10 Pro

Hi Andy,

I have to say that XPS 8500 and XPS 8700 have different net adapters and controllers for Lan and WiFi.

There are drivers for Windows 10 in XPS 8700. Dell got them.

The problem is that Dell and Realtek didn't make the same for XPS 8500.

You can't use the same drivers in XPS 8500 than in XPS 8700.

Thanks for your comments!

Best regards,

Rafa

 

You might make sure you son takes note of the message if it happens to pop up again.. Knowing what was asking to shut something down and what it wanted to shut down may be helpful. Hopefully it isn't some type of virus.

There could be some type of malfunction with one of the machines, are they both running the same Bios version?

Any other differences with the systems as far as software or hardware?

You might try running a Boot log which you can set from MSconfig.exe. Make one when the system is booting normally so you can compare if the problem occurs again. Save it somewhere else since it will be overwritten by another log. Of course you could use the other system to compare.