Slow Boot w/ AntiVirus

  • Thread starter Thread starter Jim Wood
  • Start date Start date
J

Jim Wood

Four, roughly-equivalent computers in the house run XP-
Home. All four start Norton AntiVirus/2003 automatically
at boot. The two older computers (about 1 year old) have
become incredibly slow to boot, taking at least a couple
of minutes, whereas the two newer ones are up and running
in less than a minute. As the slow computers boot they
seem to pause during the process, as indicated by the HDD
indicator LEDs staying dark for some time.

Taking Microsoft's tip and selectively disabling Services
under MSCONFIG suggests that Norton is the culprit. With
the four listed Norton utilities unchecked, the two
computers boot quickly. But the two 'good' computers are
running the same utilities! Anyone know what gives here?
 
You must remember that a decent antivirus program checks every single file
that is accessed, by default. The more programs and services you have
starting during bootup, the slower it will be.

Go to www.blackviper.com and look at the list of services you may be able to
disable. Also, there are many programs that install themselves gratuitously
into the system tray. Most of them can be started upon demand. They don't
have to be running (and monitoring) all the time.

Also, your 2 older computers are likely of lesser speed and have lesser RAM
installed. This will compound the condition.

--
Regards:

Richard Urban

aka Crusty (-: Old B@stard :-)
 
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