Boot sequence

[Gordon Nelson]

Is it possible to force WinXP to give some kind of a visual or audio signal
when it has finished booting? It takes two to three minutes to boot. I would
like to know when it is finished doing its thing so I can go on with my
daily business. The disk activity light goes on and off and just about the
time I think it is finished, there will be more disk activity. In Control
Panel/Sounds and Audio Devices there are a number of events shown that can
be made to generate sounds. Which of those is the latest in the boot
sequence?

 

[R. McCarty]

Instead of a tone - examine what's running and why it takes so long to
complete a boot. Unless you're running Symantec or McAfee then a
full boot cycle should complete in around a minute. You probably have
too many Startup and Watchdog applets or the System is experiencing
boot service time-out errors that unnecessarily extend boot times.
AutoRuns from SysInternals ( now Microsoft ) is a good tool to help
track startups. Event Viewer can assist in locating System/Application
error(s).
Event Viewer accessible by:
Click Start, Run (type) EventVwr.Msc [Enter]

*SysInternals content is being moved to Microsoft TechNet so I'm
not sure the original site is still available.

 

[Rock]

Is it possible to force WinXP to give some kind of a visual or audio signal
when it has finished booting? It takes two to three minutes to boot. I would
like to know when it is finished doing its thing so I can go on with my
daily business. The disk activity light goes on and off and just about the
time I think it is finished, there will be more disk activity. In Control
Panel/Sounds and Audio Devices there are a number of events shown that can
be made to generate sounds. Which of those is the latest in the boot
sequence?

Turn on the computer, go get your coffee, tea, coke or water, and come
back. Three minutes might be a bit long, though following the previous
method, a minute or so more or less doesn't matter.

Is the system free of malware? If so do some clean boot troubleshooting
to see if you can identify what's taking the extra time. You might
shave off a minute.

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