Boot time takes WAY too long
 

Hello everybody. I have a problem with my friends notebook. For some reason or another, it seems that the boot time to get into Windows is extremely long and stays in the loading screen (the Windows XP screen with the scrolling Blue bar) for extended periods of time, up to 2x the normal startup length (compared to my tablet). I've already cleared the problem with Malware and it has been found that this is NOT malware related.

From a suggestion, I have performed a clean boot, which has not fixed the problem. I have disabled System.ini, Win.ini as well as disabled all non-windows-required services and the boot time is still extreme. Please help.

How did you clear that it is not Spyware/Malware?

When was the last time the hard drive was defragged?

I fixed the spyware/malware in the Cyber Safety forum. AnnMarie helped me clear everything that was spyware and malware related. (S)he than said to post in the XP forum if the clean boot did not fix the problem.

As for Defragging the hard drive, no clue, this is my friend's computer, but I'd probably guess never. I'll try that first though.

Out of curiosity, do you have DSL? Windows can hang trying to resolve a DNS issue. As an experiment you might try assigning yourself a static IP on your network.

Goodluck!

--LarryS

It's not even connected to a network. I've disabled wireless and disconnected the ethernet, any network related problems should not be exsistant.

I'm going to bump this if it was missed earlier...

You may want to take a look at the startups, see whats loading during boot. Some of what is loading might not be "needed" for windows to boot and take up lots of system resources. Some folks have everything from quicktime to a p2p app starting at boot and it slows the boot time wayyyy down.

Go into task manager and in the lower left hand corner it says "Processes: xx" Where xx represents the number of processes that the computer is running. What is that number? Directly next to it, it says CPU Usage. What is the CPU Usage averageing?

There's only 20 Processes running. and 0% cpu power. This is off a clean boot by the way, disabling System.ini, Win.ini, and Startup Tasks. It still takes up to 2x the normal boot time.

Is there no shred of hope to revive this?

longshot, try running ace utilities iusing the wizard, it might help. It has a free 30 day uncrippled trial. Its been known to speed up computers.

If that does not help, tell more about your system, cpu, ram, harddrive size and free space available.

What are your full system specs. (ie CPU, motherboard, video card, power supply, RAM, hard drive(s), size of hard drives.)

Ace Utilities slightly improved it, but it still much to slow compared to regular boot time.

As far as system specs go:

Pentium M 2.0GHz
1024MB RAM
ATI FireGL V3200

It's a notebook so I'm not sure about the power supply, the hard drive is a generic brand I assume, and has a capacity of 80GB

check your antiviruses and see if any scanning is being done during boot also if you have two antiviruses running at the same time, uninstall one. if you have any updating programs running at startup, stop them. if you have anything scanning the registry for spyware and such, stop them.

anyway, how much free space do you have on the drive?

Check if there's a CD-RW in the Drive. Don't ask me why, but they SERIOOUSLEY slowed down my boot time.