On occasions when I boot my Windows 7 PC the boot process goes into a wait state and never comes out. This has been happening, off and on, for about a year.
On my PC the normal boot process first displays an "Intel” screen. Eventually that screen disappears and the Windows logo appears and the boot process continues on to completion.
This Intel screen, when it first appears, has only the Intel logo on it, nothing else.
Then after maybe 12 to 15 seconds, two messages are displayed just below the Intel logo -
Bios Settings - F2
Boot Menu -F10
These two messages stay for about 6 to 8 seconds, then the entire Intel logo screen disappears and the “Starting Windows” screen appears and the boot process runs to completion.
The problem is that sometimes the boot process never progresses past the Intel logo screen. I have discovered from observation that if the “Bios/Boot” messages do not appear at about the expected time, they never appear and the boot process never completes. I am forced to power off the PC and power back on. Once I do power off and then on, the error does not usually occur at the 2nd power on, though it has on a few occasions.
I have waited as long as 20 minutes for the boot process to complete before powering off and starting over. But I have discovered that if the “Bios/Boot” messages do not appear by about 1 minute into the boot process, they aren’t going to and I must power off.
This problem happens randomly without any clear pattern but can be as frequent as every boot or as infrequent as once every 2 weeks or so.
I suspect some sort of virus though I don’t know of any way to verify that. My antivirus scans has never produced anything relating to this.
Anyone have any ideas on the cause of this?
Specs
Motherboard Model -Intel DH55TC
Motherboard Version -AAE70932-206
Processor - Intel® Core™i5 CPU
BIOS Version - TCIBX10H.86A.0028.2009.1206.1520