Geting terrible performance. System chugs on hard drive a full several minutes after GUI appears

[Peter Dickason]

Got a new Vista laptop last year which was a terrible mistake. I have not
been happy with it at all. My problem is the computer takes a full 10
minutes to complete starting up. I assumed this was because it was short on
memory and was paging like nuts. It only came with 1 gig. So I upgraded it
to 4 gig but to my surprise, this did not make much of a difference. It
still takes several minutes to finish starting up. So to track down the
offending program, I disabled all non-microsoft services and all startup
items. So now my bare bones system still takes several minutes to finsh
chugging on the hard drive and get to a point where I can do anything. So
it looks like Windows itself is the offending program. So my question here
is what the heck is wrong with Vista that it takes so long to come up? It
has always been my theory that the default shutdown option was changed to
stand-by because of this 10 minute start-up but there has got to be
something that can be done about it. Any input?

Thanks
Pete

 

[Mike Hall - MVP]

Got a new Vista laptop last year which was a terrible mistake. I have not
been happy with it at all. My problem is the computer takes a full 10
minutes to complete starting up. I assumed this was because it was short
on memory and was paging like nuts. It only came with 1 gig. So I
upgraded it to 4 gig but to my surprise, this did not make much of a
difference. It still takes several minutes to finish starting up. So to
track down the offending program, I disabled all non-microsoft services
and all startup items. So now my bare bones system still takes several
minutes to finsh chugging on the hard drive and get to a point where I can
do anything. So it looks like Windows itself is the offending program.
So my question here is what the heck is wrong with Vista that it takes so
long to come up? It has always been my theory that the default shutdown
option was changed to stand-by because of this 10 minute start-up but
there has got to be something that can be done about it. Any input?

Thanks
Pete

Vista does not generally take 10 minutes to start unless there is incorrect
interaction between drivers and hardware or a hardware fault.. Have you ever
had the machine checked professionally for hardware errors?

--
Mike Hall - MVP
How to construct a good post..
http://dts-l.com/goodpost.htm
How to use the Microsoft Product Support Newsgroups..
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?pr=newswhelp&style=toc
Mike's Window - My Blog..
http://msmvps.com/blogs/mikehall/default.aspx

 

[Peter Dickason]

All you have to do is google vista and slow startup and you will see that
this is a common issue. It's not my machine. It's been like this out of
the box which is the frustrating part to spend so much money on a system not
up to par. I was hoping to get some advise about speeding it up instead of
statements that it's my hardware. I've already made sure drivers were up to
date and that there were no other errors. I did finally find what makes
Vista slow. The Windows search, superfetch and readyboost. After disabling
all of those, my system starts up and is usable in minutes which is more
acceptable. I can live with a search taking the time when I search and have
apps take a little longer to load rather than have poor performance at all
other times.


Pete

 

[Mike Hall - MVP]

All you have to do is google vista and slow startup and you will see that
this is a common issue. It's not my machine. It's been like this out of
the box which is the frustrating part to spend so much money on a system
not up to par. I was hoping to get some advise about speeding it up
instead of statements that it's my hardware. I've already made sure
drivers were up to date and that there were no other errors. I did
finally find what makes Vista slow. The Windows search, superfetch and
readyboost. After disabling all of those, my system starts up and is
usable in minutes which is more acceptable. I can live with a search
taking the time when I search and have apps take a little longer to load
rather than have poor performance at all other times.


Pete

Except that some systems have all of those enabled and still the machine
boots up in less than 10 minutes.. mine for instance..


--
Mike Hall - MVP
How to construct a good post..
http://dts-l.com/goodpost.htm
How to use the Microsoft Product Support Newsgroups..
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?pr=newswhelp&style=toc
Mike's Window - My Blog..
http://msmvps.com/blogs/mikehall/default.aspx

 

[Ron]

Pete,

Vista is a real dog and a hog of an OS.

Lets hope windows 7 gets it right!

Cheers

Ron

 

[Mick Murphy]

A lot of 3rd party software will start at startup be default, unless changed.
Things like MSN messenger, skype, Quicktime, etc.

And if you are using Norton, Trend or McAfee, that in itself is a problem.

 

[Peter Dickason]

Yes I realize those A/V sotware's have evolved into a bunch of bloat which
is why I use Avast. But it's not that. In my first post I decared that I
have already tried turning of everything!

I used to like Trend myself but it has gone by way of Norton and has become
a hog as well.

Pete

 

[Peter Dickason]

So what do you recommend? This laptop has an AMD Turion64x2 chip with 4 gig
of memory so I would have thought it would scream. I hate to spend $150 to
upgrade to Vista 64 since I have to reason to go to 64 bit. I have no 64
bit apps and I have no reason to go over 4 gig of memory. Nor could this
laptop hold any more than 4 gig.

thx
Pete

 

[Peter Dickason]

Thanks, no but I have thought about it. The only problem is I only have the
Acer restore CD and not a clean Vista install CD so if it was something from
Acer, I wouldn't gain anything with a reinstall. I've just been trying to
clean up afterwards.

Pete

 

[Gordon]

Thanks, no but I have thought about it. The only problem is I only have
the Acer restore CD and not a clean Vista install CD so if it was
something from Acer, I wouldn't gain anything with a reinstall. I've just
been trying to clean up afterwards.

Pete

Please QUOTE the post you are replying to.

http://dts-l.net/goodpost.htm
http://www.netmeister.org/news/learn2quote.html

Thank you.

 

[Steve Thackery]

All you have to do is google vista and slow startup and you will see that

this is a common issue.

Not to the extent you're getting it, it isn't.

It's not my machine.

Of course it is. Otherwise we'd all be suffering ten minute startups. Mine
starts in just under one minute. It's either your hardware, or something
wrong with the OS installation. But it definitely isn't a generic problem
with Vista.

It's been like this out of the box........

Well, QED. But seriously, I strongly recommend you take this up with the
supplier. You are quite right to say that it is completely unacceptable.
The more you mess with it yourself, the more excuses you are giving them to
argue.

I'm sorry if this isn't the answer you wanted, but really - it's the
vendor's problem.

SteveT

 

[Ian D]

Yes I realize those A/V sotware's have evolved into a bunch of bloat which
is why I use Avast. But it's not that. In my first post I decared that I
have already tried turning of everything!

I used to like Trend myself but it has gone by way of Norton and has
become a hog as well.

Pete

I know this is getting off the thread, but Norton 2009 is lean and
mean. All the bloat is gone. I'm using NIS 2009, and it only
uses one service and 3 small processes totalling 10MB of memory
usage. There are no more of those delays on startup, as NIS starts
almost instantly after the desktop appears. Most updates are now
done in 10 seconds. It is getting very good user reviews.

 

[Peter Dickason]

That's exactly what I was looking for. Some direction in figuring out what
the problem is. I'm a server man so I know my way around a computer but
Vista is new to me. I was hoping to get information what logs I can look at
since MS thinks Vista people arent capable of using Bootvis.

What is taking so long ? Is it the at the rolling green bars, or does
it take a long time to get to the Welcome screen, or is it the Welcome
screen itself that hangs for a long time ?

It takes a long time after it reaches the desktop. Up to 10 minutes of hard
drive thrashing during which time I can't do anything. And that's with no
startup items and all non-microsoft services disabled. I found that turning
off search and a couple of other non-essential services calmed it down. I'm
also looking at diskeeper so I'll see what that that does for me.

Thanks again for the help.

Pete

 

[Peter Dickason]

Hmmm...Maybe I'll take another look at NIS.