DOS style loading bar pre-Windows boot

[Wintermute]

Okay, last couple of days my system's been lagging like a bitch for no forseeable reason so I did a much needed re-format today and set the Windows boot disc to do an NTFS format of my HDD pre-installation same as I always do.

When the format finishes and the system reboots I get a DOS-style loading bar at the bottom of the screen right after the Boot from disc option but before Windows boot screen with its own bar starts up proper.

Never actually seen said bar previously and even after another re-format it's still there. Not too big a deal but it is increasing the boot time quite a bit and the fact it's picked now to appear is pissing me off since Murphy's Law loves to show up whenever I do any sort of maintenance.

Thing is I haven't got a clue where it's coming from. It's never popped up from a format before, and I haven't changed any BIOS or hardware settings at all within the last few months.

Is it possible it's a problem with the HDD? A recent error resulted in my losing a few sectors but I ran a disk repair and made a note to format my secondary partition and merge it back to the main one pre-format.

Anyone have any idea where the hell this bar came from and how I can get rid of the damn thing? My google-fu seems to be lacking.

[The Stig]

I believe that to be a harmless bar. Perhaps something on the system masks it and now you're assuming/thinking it is something wrong. I haven't had it but I've had it on my "virtual" Windows XP box, doesn't appear to slow down boot up at all, it disappears fast.

[SephYuyX]

You mean just the white blinking filled in box, yeah? No prompts or anything else? It just blinks a few times and works as normal?

My old PC did that, freaked me out at first cuse when you see that just by itself is a very bad thing. But meh, I never bothered looking in to it, and never had a problem with the PC.

You could always try a non quick reformat again

[Wintermute]

Yeah it's a series of white bars on the bottom of the screen and it slowly fills out. Hangs there for near a minute then goes to the XP loading screen. Never seen the bar fill itself out.

Never use the "quick format" option and it's picked today to make its appearance. Just pissed off because stupid shit happens whenever I try to format or clean up my desktop...

[SephYuyX]

Oh the loading bar one, alright, well, I usually only see that when I reimage a PC, but again, theres nothing harmful to it. Id suggest taking the HD and put it secondary on another PC, do a fdisk on it, then plug it back in and do a slow format.

[Cjskater]

I think it has to do with "NT" itself, I first seen it in Windows 2000...which I think is the default loading bar. Since then I've randomly seen it, mostly on slower computers and bad overclocks (boots slow on crappy mobos). Since you said your HDD had some problems though I would definitely look at that first. Both of the situations I mentioned had to do with the HDD.

[rezn0r]

the black/white loading bar is normal, don't let that bother you - however now that you see it when you used to not (some people always see it) something might be wrong with your drivers or hdd. check event viewer, are there any errors after booting?

[Tom K]

I realise it's been a couple of months since this thread was last posted to, but I'd love to know if you resolved your problem because the same thing has just happened to me.

My computer had been a bit sluggish in the last few days while browsing the internet ( I had installed skype and a few audio codecs in the days previous.). This morning it went into a boot loop from which it could not escape: got to windows xp logo screen with black background then BSOD (too quick to see message) and reboot.

I decided to do a full format of the hard drive. All went well until it booted into Windows for the first time and I noticed the black screen followed by a white loading bar just before the windows xp logo screen and a much longer boot time than before.

My event viewer/system shows an Error as follows

The device, \Device\Harddisk0\D, has a bad block.

I have read some scary comments by various people as to what this might entail. I am running chkdsk right now.

Any info or insights would be greatly appreciated though.

Cheers

Incidentally, when I ran an old version of Spybot after the reformat it showed Virtumonde.sci infecting my computer (nothing had showed previous to the reformat). I decided to update to a newer version and now I can find no trace of said malware. Weird.

[Cephius]

I realise it's been a couple of months since this thread was last posted to, but I'd love to know if you resolved your problem because the same thing has just happened to me.

My computer had been a bit sluggish in the last few days while browsing the internet ( I had installed skype and a few audio codecs in the days previous.). This morning it went into a boot loop from which it could not escape: got to windows xp logo screen with black background then BSOD (too quick to see message) and reboot.

I decided to do a full format of the hard drive. All went well until it booted into Windows for the first time and I noticed the black screen followed by a white loading bar just before the windows xp logo screen and a much longer boot time than before.

My event viewer/system shows an Error as follows

The device, \Device\Harddisk0\D, has a bad block.

I have read some scary comments by various people as to what this might entail. I am running chkdsk right now.

Any info or insights would be greatly appreciated though.

Cheers

Incidentally, when I ran an old version of Spybot after the reformat it showed Virtumonde.sci infecting my computer (nothing had showed previous to the reformat). I decided to update to a newer version and now I can find no trace of said malware. Weird.

It's possible your hard drive is on the way out. How old is it?