Anyone: Debug exceptionally long boot time problem..

G

Geir Holmavatn

Hi,

We have a bunch of Dell Latitude 120L notebooks with WinXP Pro which are
exceptionally slow in booting. It takes over 2 minutes from power-on
till the logon dialog appears. Same delay with or without network
cable. The colored winxp flag on black background displays for around
1min 45secs.

No error messages appears before or after login, but the computer is
very slow on all operations and the sound playback is chopped.

We have run several antivirus and spyware scanners but they find nothing.

However when restoring the original (new computer) disk image with the
same software (Norman Virus Comntrol and OpenOffice) everything works as
expected with a boot time of around 20 secs to login.

Could it be some kind of driver conflict with a windows update or
something? There is nothing unusual in Device Manager and there is no
'unusual' processes using cpu cycles either.

How do I attack this problem, where should I start looking?

Thanks a bunch for tips on how to crack this ;-)

regards

geir
 
R

R. McCarty

Are you using a customized image ? if so was it created based on the
original factory image or something built from "Scratch" ?
Sounds to me like remnants of Norton AV are resident and the services
it loads are timing out waiting on Dependant services to load.
Regardless, I'd start by checking the System Event Log would should
what if any services are failing/timing out on boot. Best to clear the log,
reboot the PC and then check the log. This way you can get an idea of
what is happening during a full boot sequence.
 
F

Frank Saunders, MS-MVP OE/WM

Geir Holmavatn said:
Hi,

We have a bunch of Dell Latitude 120L notebooks with WinXP Pro which are
exceptionally slow in booting. It takes over 2 minutes from power-on till
the logon dialog appears. Same delay with or without network cable. The
colored winxp flag on black background displays for around 1min 45secs.

No error messages appears before or after login, but the computer is very
slow on all operations and the sound playback is chopped.

We have run several antivirus and spyware scanners but they find nothing.

However when restoring the original (new computer) disk image with the
same software (Norman Virus Comntrol and OpenOffice) everything works as
expected with a boot time of around 20 secs to login.

Could it be some kind of driver conflict with a windows update or
something? There is nothing unusual in Device Manager and there is no
'unusual' processes using cpu cycles either.

How do I attack this problem, where should I start looking?
Click to expand...

How many programs are loading at startup that are not in your image? Open
any that you don't use and find where to tell them not to load at startup.
 
G

Geir Holmavatn

R. McCarty skrev:
Are you using a customized image ? if so was it created based on the
original factory image or something built from "Scratch" ?
Sounds to me like remnants of Norton AV are resident and the services
it loads are timing out waiting on Dependant services to load.
Regardless, I'd start by checking the System Event Log would should
what if any services are failing/timing out on boot. Best to clear the log,
reboot the PC and then check the log. This way you can get an idea of
what is happening during a full boot sequence.
Click to expand...

Norton AV has never been installed, but can the 'dependant services'
issue be caused by other software?

After having completed the original notebook's winxp installation I just
installed OpenOffice and Norman Virus Control and then backed up this
disk image on an external computer. With this 'original' config the
Latitude boots in around 20 secs. If I restore this image on one of
these 'slow' computer disks it boots as fast as it did when it was new.

We experience this with around 30% of our 150 Dell Latutude computers,
purchased in the summer last year.

There has been nothing 'interesting' in the system event log, only
'normal' entries like not finding the domain controller and not able to
syncronize tod clock etc when not connected to the network. We have a
national winxp version so it does not make much sense if I post the
event excerpt here (why cannot microsoft keep such 'technical'
information in plain English in any version..?)

I have cleared the system log and reboot once again to double-check.
The hdd light is almost constantly lighting, and I have also tried to
find smth 'interesting' with SysInternal's filemon, but I was not able
to get smth intelligent out of the thousands of lines output.

Any other clues?

Any comment or hint is highly appreciated

regards

Geir
 
G

Geir Holmavatn

Frank Saunders, MS-MVP OE/WM skrev:
How many programs are loading at startup that are not in your image?
Open any that you don't use and find where to tell them not to load at
startup.
Click to expand...

You mean whan I find in the HKCU and HKLM's Run folders?

(The ones located in the StartUp folder are not executed before logion
so they are not interesting)

regards

Geir
 
R

R. McCarty

Nothing comes to mind, other than maybe are all these PCs using the
same BIOS revision ? Hard drive activity may be the Indexing service
trying to build the catalogs or perhaps the computers attempting to
find and map shared files/printers. (Folder Options)
 
G

Geir Holmavatn

R. McCarty skrev:
Nothing comes to mind, other than maybe are all these PCs using the
same BIOS revision ? Hard drive activity may be the Indexing service
trying to build the catalogs or perhaps the computers attempting to
find and map shared files/printers. (Folder Options)
Click to expand...

Have tried to upgrade the BIOS to the latest minor version, but no
apparent change in boot time.

Do the above services start from the beginning of the boot process?
When do I check for all such services?

regards

Geir
 
H

Homer J. Simpson

MS's old bootvis.exe tool might help track down the source of the delay.
The problem however might be in finding that utility; I believe MS took it
off their web site. I haven't been able to locate it there in months (not
that I try every week...)
 
R

Rock

Hi,

We have a bunch of Dell Latitude 120L notebooks with WinXP Pro which are
exceptionally slow in booting. It takes over 2 minutes from power-on
till the logon dialog appears. Same delay with or without network
cable. The colored winxp flag on black background displays for around
1min 45secs.

No error messages appears before or after login, but the computer is
very slow on all operations and the sound playback is chopped.

We have run several antivirus and spyware scanners but they find nothing.

However when restoring the original (new computer) disk image with the
same software (Norman Virus Comntrol and OpenOffice) everything works as
expected with a boot time of around 20 secs to login.

Could it be some kind of driver conflict with a windows update or
something? There is nothing unusual in Device Manager and there is no
'unusual' processes using cpu cycles either.

How do I attack this problem, where should I start looking?
Click to expand...

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
 
F

Frank Saunders, MS-MVP OE/WM

Geir Holmavatn said:
Frank Saunders, MS-MVP OE/WM skrev:


You mean whan I find in the HKCU and HKLM's Run folders?

(The ones located in the StartUp folder are not executed before logion so
they are not interesting)
Click to expand...


Depends on where they are.
 

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