I have a first-ever issue with my HP 6000 Pro mid-tower ; it's booting very, very slooowly into the BIOS. At first I thought it was stuck on the  "HP Invent" blue screen. But after reseating the RAM, taking out the CMOS battery, removing DISK drives, etc. I  saw if I left the computer alone long enough it would go through the normal boot up cycle, only at a record snails' pace.
It will go to the BIOS screen eventually, where everything looks normal. And it will respond to my keyboard, only it takes a long time. Now I'm wondering if the problem is my Nvidia GT120 video card. Or could it be the CPU? Has anyone had experience with this KIND of thing?REMOVE everything not needed for a simple BIOS screen.
No Hard drive.
No floppy
No CD-ROM
No video card
No USB things
No mouse
No keyboard
No CMOS cell
One RAM stick
Simple VGA on built in video

The BIOS should display an error right away.

What test tools do you have?
Volt meter? Oscilloscope?  AM/FM Radio?

If the problem still persists, it might be  symptom of a bad capacitor on the motherboard.


I have a voltmeter. I've looked for swollen capacitors but everything looks normal. The power supply of your tower must deliver + 5 volts and + 12 volts to this connector of the CD-ROM drive.


Blacks are negative, red is 5 volts and the yellow is 12 volts.
It the readings  are note withing 3 percent of the stated voltage,you  may have a power supply issue.

You really got me on the right track about disconnecting everything - I was able to boot the computer into Windows, and am now plugging everything back in one piece at a time, to see what might have caused the issue. Thanks!If it helps I've seen this many times with a bad HDD or optical drive, as they are accessed for the BIOS to detect them sometimes they either hang the system or make it take an absolute age to POST.  A bad data cable can do the same thing, so I would be inclined to check your cables and drives, and if you do get the system all back together as it was and it boots fine, run a diagnostic on your HDD just to be safe.