Hello Mike...,

>The system takes nearly five minutes to boot. He is running a number
>of tasks at boot-up but even booting into Safe Mode took nearly three
>minutes (with a lot of unusual disk crunching sounds, I might add).

 It looks like your HDD loose its intrinsic stable controller
 parameters and don't pass SMART test at logon (independently of BIOS
 setup!).
 You should to check your HDD by the S.M.A.R.T Disk Monitor for
 example (www.santools.com). It works in the Graphycal interface only.
 However there are many HDD utilities that work in the DOS mode only.

 If you obtain Scull & cross boned window, then complan to HDD vendor.
 Note that unusual disk crunching sounds are the typical for that
 problem.

--
Best regards,
 Yakymakha

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