Computer taking long time to boot

[TinyMage]

When I reset my computer my screen will go blank for like 2 mins and it ( my computer ) will make a high pitched sound untill it finally reboots and goes to the screen that shows your hardrive and checks your memory and all that. Then it starts windows like normal. Sometimes it takes longer then 2 mins and I have to keep pushing the reset button untill it kicks in. Also opening my cd rom drive sometimes works to get it to go.

It was working fine for about 8 months or so. I was thinking this might have something to do with the motherboard? Isn't there a battery or something that can go bad during temperature changes??? It started happening when it turned colder.

Motherboard is k7s5a something or other, its about 4 years old i think.
windows98.

[DELTREE]

Isn't there a battery? Is your clock keeping time?
Puter work better when it is cooler.
keep pushing the reset button untill it kicks in. That can cause you a lot of problems (Starting / shut down cold).
Give us some info. on the puter, what OS are you running, how old is it?

[RiftZM2003]

You might wanna try going to start > run > msconfig (assuming you're using windows), and do a selective start up. That'll help your computer reboot faster, since you don't have a lot of useless programs starting up all at once when they don't need to be. Most things you install or download will, by default, set themselves up to load when Windows does.

Also, repeatedly pushing the "reset" button can be very harmful to your computer, especially if your computer is simply lagging for a bit. It sounds like your computer is kind of old, or you have a lot of junk on your computer. The more stuff you download and install on your computer, the slower it gets. Even uninstalling somethings doesn't help too much, but it does a little. Also, I'd download some Spyware program and run a quick check-up on your computer. Generally, most people get between 50 - 300 instances of Spyware on their computer without them even knowing about it. This can SERIOUSLY slow down your computer, as each instance of Spyware uses RAM faster than 90% of programs running, including most games.

Try checking into those options first before anything else. If none of that works, it could possibly be a hardware problem (especially since you mentioned a high pitch noise). It's better to find a cheap solution first (if possible), instead of blowing money on new hardware. =)

Good luck, keep us posted.