Mindy,
There are so many things that can cause a slow startup! 5 minutes is an
*extremely* long time tough - it should be less than 1 minute. If it is a
moden machine with XP, it should be closer to 30 seconds.
When you originally got the system, how long did it take? You could aim for
this.
I would start by doing a spring clean. You don't mention what operating
system you are running, or what the hardware configuration is. It would help
to know.
For a spring clean, you should do the following:
Empty all files out of your temp directories,
Delete all files you no longer want (within reason).
Empty the internet explore cache and make sure it is a sensible size.
Empty the recycle bin.
Run a defrag.
.... while you are at it, run a disk scan as well.
If you are running XP, check what programs are automatically starting when
the system starts:
Click Start, Run, msconfig
Each entry should correspond to something either windows has installed or
your have installed and that you want to run. Do you have a lot of little
icons in your task bar(bottom right)? Do you use any or all of them? If you
use predominantly few or none of them then you can consider each one in turn
and using msconfig you may be able to identify each startup program. Do this
with some caution - you don't want to disable your anti virus.
Anti Virus: Is it up to date? How old is the virus signature file? Do you
have a virus? Do you have Anto Virus software? If not, get an AV program,
get it up to date and do a full system scan. Is the AV program configured
correctly? I have seen systems where the AV program has a bun fight with
another program at startup and caused a problem of a similar scale. In this
case, re-installing the AV program fixed the problem.
Anti Spyware: download and install either / both Spy Bot Search and Destroy
or Ad-Aware and do a full scan of your system to see if it is infected with
spyware. Clean it up and keep it clean.
Personally, I would tackle the disc tidy first - delete rubbish files and
empty recycle bin as it takes only a few seconds, then move on to Anti Virus
and make sure it is working correctly. If neither help much, then consider
disabling everything set for AutoStart (some programs may no longer work)
and see if the system boots as it should. If it does, then enable each item
in Auto Start until you find the culprit.
Post back with specific questions about each of the above steps if you are
unsure, but include details on Operating System, Hardware and all other
relevant information. This is important as the problem could be as simple as
having much too little memory in your computer.
HTH
- Tim
