6 minutes Start-up

[Guest]

It takes 6 minutes from the time I press the power button of my laptop to the
time every program has finished to load (not including Outlook 2003) and I
can use my laptop (usually internet explorer) at normal speed. Is 6 minutes
too long, doctor? What is your average time?

 

[Alias~-]

It takes 6 minutes from the time I press the power button of my laptop to the
time every program has finished to load (not including Outlook 2003) and I
can use my laptop (usually internet explorer) at normal speed. Is 6 minutes
too long, doctor? What is your average time?

Six minutes is about five minutes too long. Start/Run/MSCONFIG and look
at the Start up Tab and see what you have loading at start up.

Alias

 

[lvee]

In this day and age, that seems like an eternity..Check to see what's
loading at startup by going to start/run
type in

msconfig

Really, the only thing that needs to be listed is your antivirus program,
noting else.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

It takes 6 minutes from the time I press the power button of my
laptop to the time every program has finished to load (not including
Outlook 2003) and I can use my laptop (usually internet explorer) at
normal speed. Is 6 minutes too long, doctor? What is your average
time?

There is no such thing as "too long." If it bothers *you*, it's too long for
you.

My personal view is that the attention many people pay to how long it takes
to boot is unwarranted. Assuming that the computer's speed is otherwise
satisfactory, it may not be worth worrying about. Most people start their
computers once a day or even less frequently. In the overall scheme of
things, even a few minutes to start up isn't very important. Personally I
power on my computer when I get up in the morning, then go get my coffee.
When I come back, it's done booting. I don't know how long it took to boot
and I don't care.

However if you do want to address it, it may be because of what programs
start automatically, and you may want to stop some of them from starting
that way. On each program you don't want to start automatically, check its
Options to see if it has the choice not to start (make sure you actually
choose the option not to run it, not just a "don't show icon" option). Many
can easily and best be stopped that way. If that doesn't work, run MSCONFIG
from the Start | Run line, and on the Startup tab, uncheck the programs you
don't want to start automatically.

However, if I were you, I wouldn't do this just for the purpose of running
the minimum number of programs. Despite what many people tell you, you
should be concerned, not with how *many* of these programs you run, but
*which*. Some of them can hurt performance severely, but others have no
effect on performance.

Don't just stop programs from running willy-nilly. What you should do is
determine what each program is, what its value is to you, and what the cost
in performance is of its running all the time. You can get more information
about these at http://castlecops.com/StartupList.html. If you can't find it
there, try google searches and ask about specifics here.

Once you have that information, you can make an intelligent informed
decision about what you want to keep and what you want to get rid of.

 

[Jon]

It may well be worth recalling that "Jacques"

It takes 6 minutes from the time I press the power button of my laptop to
the
time every program has finished to load (not including Outlook 2003) and I
can use my laptop (usually internet explorer) at normal speed. Is 6
minutes
too long, doctor? What is your average time?

Try hibernation instead - approx. 30 seconds, from being turned off

 

[Rock]

It takes 6 minutes from the time I press the power button of my laptop to
the
time every program has finished to load (not including Outlook 2003) and I
can use my laptop (usually internet explorer) at normal speed. Is 6
minutes
too long, doctor? What is your average time?

Do some clean boot troubleshooting to see what is holding things up.

Clean Boot Troubleshooting

How to Troubleshoot By Using the Msconfig Utility in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=310560

How to perform advanced clean-boot troubleshooting in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=316434

How to perform a clean boot in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=310353

Here are some sites to research startup programs

Research sites
www.google.com
http://www.answersthatwork.com/Tasklist_pages/tasklist.htm
http://castlecops.com/StartupList.html
http://www.theeldergeek.com/services_guide.htm

 

[Richard John]

It may well be worth recalling that "Jacques"


Try hibernation instead - approx. 30 seconds, from being turned off

I find that hibernation works for a day or two then the
thing becomes "goofy" in that it will sometimes, out of the
blue, while coming out of hibernation - just go into a
reboot. I have much less trouble on my Notebook computer by
going into standby instead.