Slow boot after installing SP2, why?

  • Thread starter Thread starter MrBill
  • Start date Start date
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MrBill

I have a Dell PC with a P4/3K chip and 1 GB of RAM. Booting is taking
4-5 times longer than before installing SP2, but then things work fine
after booting has completed. The slowdown begins about the time the
system is loading the desktop icons, and continues through the time
the system loads my StartUp programs. FWIW, there seems to be a LOT
of hard disk activity during the slowdown. I did run a defrag but
this made only a minimal improvement.

This is not a major problem, just an irritation! Does anyone know
what I can to to return my boot to its pre-SP2 speed?

Thanks, Bill
 
No I hadn't, but it's a couple of hours since my original post and
interestingly enough - boot speed is back to normal. But I did
nothing to fix the problem . . . very weird!

- Bill
 
It may take a few boots for SP2 to settle down.. one of the reasons, I have
been told, is that SP2 is building up the pre-fetch..
 
MrBill said:
I have a Dell PC with a P4/3K chip and 1 GB of RAM. Booting is taking
4-5 times longer than before installing SP2, but then things work fine
after booting has completed. The slowdown begins about the time the
system is loading the desktop icons, and continues through the time
the system loads my StartUp programs. FWIW, there seems to be a LOT
of hard disk activity during the slowdown. I did run a defrag but
this made only a minimal improvement.

This is not a major problem, just an irritation! Does anyone know
what I can to to return my boot to its pre-SP2 speed?

Thanks, Bill
Click to expand...

It can take several days and 3 or 4 reboots for it to speed up. First
defrag. The boot prefetch will kick in after the 3 rd reboot. It takes
several days for the prefetch folder to be rebuilt. And the in built
optimization kicks in every 3 days. After that defrag again. If the
system is still slow after some days try some clean boot troubleshooting
to see what may be hanging up on startup. A program may need to be
uninstalled / reinstalled:

How to troubleshoot by using the System Configuration utility in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=310560

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