Arch Linux

budabob07

Member

Registered: 2012-09-24

Posts: 10

[SOLVED] System Slowness

I have a system that's around 10 months old and it often gets extremely slow during boot and while it's running. I am guessing it is a hardware problem because the issue happens pre-boot, and in both Arch and Windows 8. On startup, the system will hang at the motherboard's splash screen for a long time (around a minute sometimes) before it loads the EFI bootloader (rEFInd). Once the system starts to boot, things that normally should be very fast (such as mounting and fsck'ing the root filesystem) take over a minute.  However, the computer sometimes boots normally and takes only around 15 seconds.
The components are:
CPU: i7-3820
Motherboard: Asrock X79 Extreme3
RAM: Corsair Vengeance 8GB (2x4GB) LP
HDD: WD Blue 500GB
GPU: Gigabyte 7970 Ghz edition (GV-R797TO-3GD) x2
PSU: Coolmax ZU-1000B
How would you recommend I troubleshoot this problem?  I'm aware the information I'm giving you isn't much to go on and the problem could be a million different things, but I'm open to any suggestions.
Thanks!

Last edited by budabob07 (2014-02-10 04:32:22)

ewaller

Administrator

From: Pasadena, CA

Registered: 2009-07-13

Posts: 20,677

Re: [SOLVED] System Slowness

I would take a real close look at the journal looking for warnings about disk errors.

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x33a

Forum Fellow

Registered: 2009-08-15

Posts: 4,587

Re: [SOLVED] System Slowness

I would take a real close look at the journal looking for warnings about disk errors.

My first thought as well. Most of the times a computer hangs at POST, the boot device is to blame. Check the log for errors, and even if it doesn't show any disk errors, do run a SMART scan.

budabob07

Member

Registered: 2012-09-24

Posts: 10

Re: [SOLVED] System Slowness

The only errors in the journal are a ton of sshd audit errors, and those don't seem relevant to the issue. The hard drive seems fine, although some values are above the manufacturer's threshold (SMART log here).  I also looked through dmesg and all the logs I could find in /var/log, and didn't find anything relevant. What kind of things should I be looking for?
Thanks

x33a

Forum Fellow

Registered: 2009-08-15

Posts: 4,587

Re: [SOLVED] System Slowness

Some other options are:

• Check the drive cables

• Update your EFI

• Try switching to BIOS instead of EFI

• Check the RAM (memtest)

Other than these, you can try a different power supply, but unless your system crashes randomly, it is unlikely to be the culprit.

Lastly, if everything else fails, the motherboard might be to blame.

budabob07

Member

Registered: 2012-09-24

Posts: 10

Re: [SOLVED] System Slowness

All the cables look fine and I'm on the latest UEFI.  What's odd though is that, when I most recently booted it, it timed out waiting for /dev/sda1 to mount and told me to give the root password or press Control-D to continue. Hitting Control-D resumed the boot process and it finished booting. Perhaps the hard drive is to blame.  Is there a way I can confirm that it is the source of the problem? I think I'll try booting to a live CD and seeing if that is still slow.

budabob07

Member

Registered: 2012-09-24

Posts: 10

Re: [SOLVED] System Slowness

Replacing the hard drive fixed the issue. Thanks for the help