Slow boot first time in the morning

[John]

My problem is more than just slow boot. It takes about 2 minutes to boot to
all my startup programs. However, for the next 10 to 15 minuts the hard drive
is running continuously. If I try to run another app., e.g. Outlook, it will
freeze and the "Not Responding" notation appears at the top of the screen.
I've tried to nail down what might be hogging the hard drive (using
reliability and performance monitor) but can't identify any single program.
I have 50 gigs free space, 2 GB RAM. I defrag once a week and clean up temp
files and cashes once a day.
It seems all proposed solutions I've run across lead me to one of the
registry cleanup programs. I run Reg. Clean & Wise Registry Cleaner once a
week.
Real time monitoring by McCafee and Windows Defender.
I have run both AD Aware and Spy Bot frequently.
Any help would be appreciated.
John

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

My problem is more than just slow boot. It takes about 2 minutes to boot to
all my startup programs. However, for the next 10 to 15 minuts the hard drive
is running continuously. If I try to run another app., e.g. Outlook, it will
freeze and the "Not Responding" notation appears at the top of the screen.
I've tried to nail down what might be hogging the hard drive (using
reliability and performance monitor) but can't identify any single program.
I have 50 gigs free space, 2 GB RAM. I defrag once a week and clean up temp
files and cashes once a day.
It seems all proposed solutions I've run across lead me to one of the
registry cleanup programs. I run Reg. Clean & Wise Registry Cleaner once a
week.

From what you've told us, I can't tell you what your problem is, but I
can tell you that you making a very bad mistake. Registry cleaning
programs are *all* snake oil. Cleaning of the registry isn't needed
and is dangerous. Leave the registry alone and don't use any registry
cleaner. Despite what many people think, and what vendors of registry
cleaning software try to convince you of, having unused registry
entries doesn't really hurt you.

The risk of a serious problem caused by a registry cleaner erroneously
removing an entry you need is far greater than any potential benefit
it may have.

Read http://www.edbott.com/weblog/archives/000643.html

Real time monitoring by McCafee

McAfee Anti-virus, is the second worst anti-virus program available,
Only Norton is worse. I recommend NOD32 if you willing to pay for one,
or Avast if you want a free one.

and Windows Defender.
I have run both AD Aware and Spy Bot frequently.

And Defender, Adaware, and Spybot Search and Destroy are three of the
weakest anti-spyware programs. I recommend that you run the freeware
versions of both of the following: MalwareBytes Anti-Malware and
SuperAntiSpyware.

 

[f/fgeorge]

My problem is more than just slow boot. It takes about 2 minutes to boot to
all my startup programs. However, for the next 10 to 15 minuts the hard drive
is running continuously. If I try to run another app., e.g. Outlook, it will
freeze and the "Not Responding" notation appears at the top of the screen.
I've tried to nail down what might be hogging the hard drive (using
reliability and performance monitor) but can't identify any single program.
I have 50 gigs free space, 2 GB RAM. I defrag once a week and clean up temp
files and cashes once a day.
It seems all proposed solutions I've run across lead me to one of the
registry cleanup programs. I run Reg. Clean & Wise Registry Cleaner once a
week.
Real time monitoring by McCafee and Windows Defender.
I have run both AD Aware and Spy Bot frequently.
Any help would be appreciated.
John

In addition to what Ken said try leaving the pc on overnight tonite
and see how it is in the morning. If it is as fast as it normally is
then it is probably all that software doing startup scans. Typically
starting up a pc is the slowest point of using a computer. Seems like
every anti-spyware, anti-virus, anti-anything wants to run a scan to
make sure all is okay. Even software programs do a scan to make sure
that you are using the latest version. The best idea is to only turn
it on and on once per day or if you can stand the $3.00 per month just
leave it on and turn the monitor off. Not the screen saver, push the
power button on the monitor. I do this last part everytime I get up
from the pc and just turn all that screen-saver stuff off. And no it
won't hurt your pc, it is electronic and digital, it is designed to
run 24/7. I do Distributed Computing, do a google search, and have
pc's that have only been turned off rarely since the day they were
first turned on, YEARS in some cases!! They work just fine!

 

[John]

In addition to what Ken said try leaving the pc on overnight tonite
and see how it is in the morning. If it is as fast as it normally is
then it is probably all that software doing startup scans. Typically
starting up a pc is the slowest point of using a computer. Seems like
every anti-spyware, anti-virus, anti-anything wants to run a scan to
make sure all is okay. Even software programs do a scan to make sure
that you are using the latest version. The best idea is to only turn
it on and on once per day or if you can stand the $3.00 per month just
leave it on and turn the monitor off. Not the screen saver, push the
power button on the monitor. I do this last part everytime I get up
from the pc and just turn all that screen-saver stuff off. And no it
won't hurt your pc, it is electronic and digital, it is designed to
run 24/7. I do Distributed Computing, do a google search, and have
pc's that have only been turned off rarely since the day they were
first turned on, YEARS in some cases!! They work just fine!

f/fgeorge,
Thanks for the suggestions. Last night I put the computer to sleep rather
than shut down. this morning when I woke it up the hard disk ran for about 10
minutes and I had trouble opening Outlook.
3 things show up on the Relibility and Performance Monitor.
searchindexer.exe
mmc.exe
mcsvrent.exe
I have no idea whether any or all of these are causing the problem.
John

 

[Questor]

--->

f/fgeorge,
Thanks for the suggestions. Last night I put the computer to sleep rather
than shut down. this morning when I woke it up the hard disk ran for about 10
minutes and I had trouble opening Outlook.
3 things show up on the Relibility and Performance Monitor.
searchindexer.exe
mmc.exe
mcsvrent.exe
I have no idea whether any or all of these are causing the problem.
John

I think what George meant was to just leave it on. Not
sleeping/hibernating, but simply leave it on. My computers (4) stay on
24/7. They are rarely turned off, only rebooted when the MS police tell
me to. In the evening I turn off the monitor, that's all. I usually
stop my email client (or mute the sound) so the 'ding dong' of arriving
mail doesn't act like Chinese water torture while asleep.

Questor

 

[SC Tom]

Type SERVICES into the Start/search and hit Enter. On the Services page
go down to WINDOWS SEARCH, right click on it, go to Properties and set
it to "Disabled" in lieu of "Automatic". Then reboot.
BTW: You must have made a typo with mcsvrent.exe - I never heard of
such a service.

I think he meant mcsvrcnt.exe, which is associated with his McAfee.
http://www.processlibrary.com/directory/files/mcsvrcnt/

SC Tom

 

[f/fgeorge]

f/fgeorge,
Thanks for the suggestions. Last night I put the computer to sleep rather
than shut down. this morning when I woke it up the hard disk ran for about 10
minutes and I had trouble opening Outlook.
3 things show up on the Relibility and Performance Monitor.
searchindexer.exe
mmc.exe
mcsvrent.exe
I have no idea whether any or all of these are causing the problem.
John

I meant just leave it on, not put to sleep, just leave like when you
are using it 'ON'!

You can safely disable the searchindexer.exe, it is something that
only sorta kinda works to store locations in memory so it can find
them quicker if you need them. Problem is like all caches if it stores
everyhting, the cache has to be sooo big it has to search the cache,
if it is too small it is useless. MS has not sorted this out yet.

mmc.exe is " Microsoft Management Console - this is normal in Windows
2000 and XP, should be located in system32. It is used by several
snap-ins, such as the defrag console, the user management console,
etc."

mcsvrent.exd is for mcafee, leave it alone! But it does look it might
be a part of your problem, it is probably the start-up scanner.