30 second freeze after startup

[Don in San Antonio]

System freezes for 30 seconds or more immediately after startup. I can
open the Startmenu and select a program but then nothing happens for
about 30 seconds. After that, the program loads normally. Bootup prior
to selecting a program to run, takes 120+ seconds and the freeze happens
after that. System is a new ASUS M2NPV-VP motherboard with AMD 3800+
dual processor and 2 Gig of Kingston Ram.

I've used Bootvis and MSConfig to identify the process running during
this period but can't figure out what's going on. Turning off
everything under Startup in MSConfig does not help. Turning off all
services seems to speed thing up, but I can't isolate the service or
services slowing things down. I'm not sure services are the real problem
anyway. Any suggestions on what else check would be appreciated.

Don

 

[RJK]

I don't think that 120 seconds is an inordinate amount of time for Windows
to get going, esp. e.g. on an aged though well maintained system. I
recently spent time looking at services on my D935 based machine, and got
rid of a few things - Quicktime rubbish / PowerDVD / Norton PQ* services,
and a few of other things in registry "run" and "startup" and it still
takes almost 1 and a 1/2 minutes for XP to finish booting up, and get going.
....I have a range of anti-malware progs. loading at boot - these take a
little while. Zonalarm firewall takes it's time !

I've said this before, If YOU had as much to to as XP has to do, during
startup - YOU'd take a couple of minutes as well.
....just leave the machine alone for 30 seconds after the timer bottle had
stopped spinning, after boot up !

regards, Richard

 

[RJK]

I don't think that 120 seconds is an inordinate amount of time for Windows
to get going, esp. e.g. even on an aged / well maintained system. I
recently spent time looking at services on my D935 based machine, and got
rid of a few things - Quicktime rubbish / PowerDVD / Norton PQ* services,
and a few other things in registry "run" and also "startup" and it still
takes almost 1 and a 1/2 minutes for my XP to finish booting up, and get
going.
....I have a range of anti-malware progs. loading at boot - these take a
little while. Zonalarm firewall takes it's time !

I've said this before, If YOU had as much to Do as XP has to do, during
startup - YOU'd take a couple of minutes as well !
....just leave the machine alone for 30 seconds after the timer bottle haS
stopped spinning, after boot up !

regards, Richard

 

[Don in San Antonio]

I do run Zone Alarm Pro and Norton Antivirus, but turning them off
doesn't remove the problem. There's definitely something going on in
the back-ground that steals all the clock cycles for 30 seconds or more.

 

[RJK]

SO WHAT !!!!!!

If you're talking about the 30 seconds or so after boot up seems to have
finished, ....after the timer bottle disappears, then, I consider that's
normal ! ...hard disk light is on for roughly that amount of time,
....WINDOWS IS STILL STARTING UP.
Just LEAVE THE MACHINE ALONE for half a minute, let it settle down.

I suspect that YOU ARE FAR TOO IMPATIENT !

You're sure gonna to do a lot with those 30 seconds, if you manage to
recover them, .... anyway ???

regards, Richard

 

[dobey]

System freezes for 30 seconds or more immediately after startup. I can
open the Startmenu and select a program but then nothing happens for about
30 seconds. After that, the program loads normally. Bootup prior to
selecting a program to run, takes 120+ seconds and the freeze happens
after that. System is a new ASUS M2NPV-VP motherboard with AMD 3800+ dual
processor and 2 Gig of Kingston Ram.

I've used Bootvis and MSConfig to identify the process running during this
period but can't figure out what's going on. Turning off everything under
Startup in MSConfig does not help. Turning off all services seems to
speed thing up, but I can't isolate the service or services slowing things
down. I'm not sure services are the real problem anyway. Any suggestions
on what else check would be appreciated.

Don

Just out of curiosity did you time it or does it just "seem" like 30
seconds?

If you have any networked drives, or external media plugged in, somtimes XP
will look for mapped network drives or access external media. DVDs left
inserted can cause delays also.

If you are using indexed searching, maybe that kicks in at startup also.

 

[Don in San Antonio]

dobey said the following on 11/1/2007 12:46 AM:

Just out of curiosity did you time it or does it just "seem" like 30
seconds?

If you have any networked drives, or external media plugged in, somtimes XP
will look for mapped network drives or access external media. DVDs left
inserted can cause delays also.

If you are using indexed searching, maybe that kicks in at startup also.

I didn't actually time it. Could be more like 15 or 20 seconds. But I
did measure he Boot time using MS Bootvis. Yesterday during this freeze
period I was dragging the MSConfig Window around the screen and it
wasn't refreshing completely. It would leave a trail of MSConfig
windows all over the screen. I filled he entire screen with MSConfig
windows just like when you win at Solitaire. When it finally finished
whatever was going on, the screen refreshed back to normal. MSConfig
had started up early during he boot process because changes had been
made. So I guess the system really isn't frozen either. It's just
running really slow while something takes all the processor clock cycles.

 

[dobey]

I didn't actually time it. Could be more like 15 or 20 seconds. But I
did measure he Boot time using MS Bootvis. Yesterday during this freeze
period I was dragging the MSConfig Window around the screen and it wasn't
refreshing completely. It would leave a trail of MSConfig windows all
over the screen. I filled he entire screen with MSConfig windows just
like when you win at Solitaire. When it finally finished whatever was
going on, the screen refreshed back to normal. MSConfig had started up
early during he boot process because changes had been made. So I guess
the system really isn't frozen either. It's just running really slow
while something takes all the processor clock cycles.

Do you happen to have AV / Anti spyware running some kind of check at start
up.

If you left these programs at default, often they will do a startup check.

One other option may be to use standby mode instead of shut down. My sytem
comes up very quick, and to all intents and purposes the machine is off. I
expect it uses a few watts, but not many.

Or, you could just take a lateral approach and turn on the compter before
you sit down and by the time you have left the room and returned or stopped
to do something else, the PC will be ready.

What you describe is pretty normal behaviour. It just depends on "what else"
XP runs when the PC starts.

 

[Anthony Buckland]

System freezes for 30 seconds or more immediately after startup. I can
open the Startmenu and select a program but then nothing happens for about
30 seconds. After that, the program loads normally. ...

On my system, after everything else has happened, ZoneAlarm
takes an additional period (never timed it, but 30 sec is about
order-of-magnitude right). Elsewhere, you mention turning
ZoneAlarm (and Norton, which you seem to feel is also necessary)
off, but I'm dubious you can ever really turn these things totally off
short of deinstallation. And if you have a high-speed connection,
you might want to consider the wisdom of turning your protection
off unless you detach physically from your gateway before booting.

 

[Poprivet]

Not unusual; nor an excessively long boot time. Everything is getting
displayed on the screen and it -looks- like it's ready to go before it
really is, that's all.
ntregopt is about the only thing I can think of that might make
things -look- cleaner to you, but it won't change the total time it takes to
boot. ntregopt simply reorganizes a few pieces of the registry sequence but
Windows will do the same thing after enough boots, just not as quick.

Pop`

 

[Don in San Antonio]

Anthony Buckland said the following on 11/1/2007 12:13 PM:

On my system, after everything else has happened, ZoneAlarm
takes an additional period (never timed it, but 30 sec is about
order-of-magnitude right). Elsewhere, you mention turning
ZoneAlarm (and Norton, which you seem to feel is also necessary)
off, but I'm dubious you can ever really turn these things totally off
short of deinstallation. And if you have a high-speed connection,
you might want to consider the wisdom of turning your protection
off unless you detach physically from your gateway before booting.

I run Zone Alarm Pro and Norton Antivirus Corporate Edition 8. I connect
to the internet through a Linksys router connected to a cable modem.
One can never be too safe.
It does seem that vsmon.exe (Norton Antivirus) is taking about 30
seconds to do something. It shows up as taking 50% of the CPU
processing time. Not sure what that means with a dual processor system.
Anyway, it seems to me the best approach here is to use sleep mode.
My restart time from sleep mode is about 3 seconds. It takes me more
time to type in my password than it does to restart.

 

[Don in San Antonio]

dobey said the following on 11/1/2007 11:15 AM:

Do you happen to have AV / Anti spyware running some kind of check at start
up.

If you left these programs at default, often they will do a startup check.

One other option may be to use standby mode instead of shut down. My sytem
comes up very quick, and to all intents and purposes the machine is off. I
expect it uses a few watts, but not many.

Or, you could just take a lateral approach and turn on the compter before
you sit down and by the time you have left the room and returned or stopped
to do something else, the PC will be ready.

What you describe is pretty normal behaviour. It just depends on "what else"
XP runs when the PC starts.

I think you have the answer. I'll just go get a cup of coffee and make
a head call while the system boots. From then on I'll just use sleep
mode. The system restarts from sleep mode in about 3 seconds.
Thanks for taking the time to answer my initial post.
Don
Don

 

[apistomaster]

I have a Dell Inspiron E1505 Lap top and although I have never timed
it, I would say it takes about two minutes from pressing the power on
button until it is fully loaded and ready to go.
Windows XP Home Edition with all service packs. Two minutes seems
reasonable to me given all that is being mobilized.
You could always just leave your computer on if two minutes is an
eternity to you.

 

[RJK]

I suspect he won't listen, as seems indicated throughout this thread !

....the well 'preened', or well 'pruned' if you prefer, services plus lots of
"goodies" I've got running on my D935 based machine, elongates my boot-up
time to almost two minutes, ...and I think it's worth every second !!!!! !!

regards, Richard

 

[apistomaster]

I just had to actually time how long it takes for my computer and
wireless periferals to all come on line and it is actually 80
seconds(just seemed longer).
I am only using 23% of my available HD memory.
I 'm definitely not a "power user."
Albert Einstein was sure right when he proved that time is relative.

 

[frodo]

you could try this .reg setting, it MAY makes things better for you:

------------
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

;; make desktop process seperate (ie, desktop and taskbar in own process)

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer]
"DesktopProcess"=dword:00000001

 

[Don in San Antonio]

apistomaster said the following on 11/2/2007 9:04 AM:

I just had to actually time how long it takes for my computer and
wireless periferals to all come on line and it is actually 80
seconds(just seemed longer).
I am only using 23% of my available HD memory.
I 'm definitely not a "power user."
Albert Einstein was sure right when he proved that time is relative.

Your boot time sounds good. I have another system that boots in about
90 seconds and that seems fast to me. On the other hand, 120 seconds
plus a 20 to 30 second slow down seems pretty excessive to me. Thanks
for the data point.

Don

BTW, I'm only using about 25% of my hard drive space.

 

[Don in San Antonio]

(e-mail address removed) said the following on 11/2/2007 11:12 AM:

you could try this .reg setting, it MAY makes things better for you:

------------
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

;; make desktop process seperate (ie, desktop and taskbar in own process)

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer]
"DesktopProcess"=dword:00000001

Added this DWord to my system and did a restart. No change that I could
see. It was good practice editing the registry. Thanks for the suggestion.

Don