Vista VERY slow for 10 minutes after startup.

[Guest]

My wife recently purchased an Acer Aspire 5100 Notebook for her work which
came preinstalled with Vista Home Premium. At first everything seemed fine
with it, then after a few weeks she started noticing that after startup,
vista was virtually unresponsive for about 10-15 minutes. After that time
everything ran fine. There has been only one application installed on the
computer, but is not running at system startup and is not launched
immediately after startup, so I don't think it could be causing the problem.

System Specs:
Acer Aspire 5100 Notebook
Preinstalled Vista Home Priemium
1GB RAM
80 GB HD
Radeon ATI Xpress 1100 Graphics Card

Steps taken:
My first thought was that it needed more RAM. Of the original gig, 1/3 of
it was being reserved for video memory. It had two 512mb sodimms in it, so I
removed one and added an additional gig, bringing me to 1.5 gigs of RAM.

RESULT: Did not notice any significant improvement as a aresult.

I then ran many of the Vista performance utilities to see if the OS was
detecting any major problems and there were none.

Next, I ran msconfig and disabled the majority of the startup applications
as well as a handful of services which I knew were not needed. Still no
improvement.

I disabled Aero and turned off all of the windows visual effects. No
improvement.

Task manager doesn't show any processes utilizing excesive amounts of
processor time or memory. Although, I have noticed that the Task Manager
tends to freeze up durning this initial post-boot lag time. So it could be
that it's just not getting updated.

I'm going to try and start it in safe mode to see if that helps. But if
anyone has any suggestions, or knows of any specific services or startup apps
that could be causing this, please let me know.

Thanks,

dpwilli

 

[Mac]

Look in task manager to see which processes are consuming cpu during this
period, and add columns for disk activity to see which processes are
thrashing the drives. Then you will be one step closer to understanding what
is going on...

 

[Guest]

Mac,
Thanks for the suggestion. I have looked at CPU utilization, but the task
manager isn't updating during this time so all running processes are showing
reasonable (< 10 - 20 % utilization). I haven't tried the disk activity
column though. I'll give that a try and post the results. Thanks for the
suggestion, and keep 'em coming.

dpwill

 

[justbob30]

This is not normal, if you are sure there is no virus/spyware take it back
to where it came from & let them fix or replace it.

 

[Mac]

It should update during that time! Check in Event Viewer to see if there is
anything being recorded during that period... Start/Orb, type Event, click
on Event Viewer.

Also in task manager sort the rows by clicking on the top of the cpu or disk
columns to see the highest activity...

 

[R. C. White]

Hi, dpwilli.

Mac's suggestions are right on!

We often hear complaints that Vista is slow at first, but then gets better
after a few days, as the Indexing Service completes the initial Index. To
see if this might be the problem, click Control Panel | Indexing Options and
see if it says "Indexing complete", or that it is "reduced due to user
activity", or similar language. Indexing is SUPPOSED to work in the
background and be almost unnoticed - and it does, AFTER it finishes building
the initial Index. Of course, it has to get to work again if we add a lot
of new content to the hard drive, such as a lot of new emails or newsgroup
messages, or importing a lot of files, especially text files, that need to
be indexed.

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
(e-mail address removed)
Microsoft Windows MVP
(Running Windows Live Mail beta in Vista Ultimate x64)

 

[Kerry Brown]

If none of the suggestions you've received pan out check your security
programs. Some antivirus and antispyware programs do a scan on startup.

 

[Guest]

Ok, so what is considered normal for Disk I/O Reads & writes?

I've got my anti-virus software doing 17,000,000 I/O Read Bytes. Windows
Explorer is doing 3,000,000 read bytes, but has 17,000,000 'I/O Other Bytes'.
Do any of those seem excessive? CPU Utilization remains normal and physical
memory is steady around 26%. Still having the same issue. 10 minutes or so
nothing will run, then all of a sudden everything is fine. No issues listed
under performance issues.

By the way, this is a 64 bit machine. Any reason that could be causing a
problem?

 

[R. C. White]

Hi, dpwilli.

Ok, so what is considered normal for Disk I/O Reads & writes?

I have no idea. :>( I've never had any need to observe or investigate
these stats.

10 minutes or so
nothing will run, then all of a sudden everything is fine.

The first thing that comes to mind is heat. Some piece of hardware inside
the case shrinks when cool and no longer functions properly. After
power-on, it takes 10 minutes for it to come up to operating temperature, or
to expand enough to make or firm up a critical connection. The hard drive
cables would be prime suspects.

Have you discussed this with Acer, or the vendor who sold you the notebook?
Is it too late for a replacement under warranty?

I probably can't help with this problem, dpwilli. Please post back when you
get it figured out and let us know. Good luck!

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
(e-mail address removed)
Microsoft Windows MVP
(Running Windows Live Mail beta in Vista Ultimate x64)

 

[nell12345]

Its the same with mine but not so long , I found out it was sorting out all the files are re-caching all of them. If you use the hibernate feature it resumes where it left off and dosnt need to restart, youll find it a hell of a lot faster. Try it

 

[Guest]

Hi.

i have the same problem.

My machine
Ram 4 gb
Video Nvidia geforce 8800 GTx
Cpu intel Core2 Quad 2.66
Board MSI P6n Sli Platinun

in vista ultima 32 bit the boot is perfect time, but when i upgrade to 64
bit, is a very slow boot ( about 7 minutes), i have a teory about the drivers
of the board.

but also is slow when i run vista 64, is dirvers problem ?

 

[Charlie Tame]

Hi.

i have the same problem.

My machine
Ram 4 gb
Video Nvidia geforce 8800 GTx
Cpu intel Core2 Quad 2.66
Board MSI P6n Sli Platinun

in vista ultima 32 bit the boot is perfect time, but when i upgrade to 64
bit, is a very slow boot ( about 7 minutes), i have a teory about the drivers
of the board.

but also is slow when i run vista 64, is dirvers problem ?

It very well could be the drivers for the board, and I doubt there's
much you can do except look on the manufacturer's website for updates.
Of course you can't do that without an OS and maybe you can't install
the drivers with the OS in place without changing some BIOS setting so
see if you can find anything related to BIOS settings when you visit. Of
course video drivers can affect other things too but it sounds like you
have have tried some things already.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

I have a acer 5103.

Turion TL-52 1.6 GHZ
2GB RAM
ATI Radeon X1300

I've been using vista on this machine for a year without any problems,
had it all tweaked out and just when everything was good (I think it was
after a windows update restart...) it took vista in the range of 10
minutes to load up and become usable. I thought it might have just been
the updates but ever since I've been experiencing this problem. Before
the whole boot up process from pressing the power button to usability
took just under 2 minutes, now it takes 10-15. After the 15 minute boot
everything works as it should, just like before.

Ten to 15 minutes is certainly on the long side. On the other hand, if
everything else is OK, most of us power on and boot once a day or less
frequently, and even a time like that doesn't hurt very much.

I press the power button and go get my coffee. When I come back it's
finished booting. I don't know how long it took and I don't care.

I've been trying
everything to get this resolved. It has been a month now and I fear the
only way to get vista working properly will be a format and installation
of windows.

That is seldom a solution to such a problem, and even if it is, you
don't find out what was wrong. That means that you will probably
repeat the behavior that caused it and soon find yourself back in the
same situation.

Things I've done:

Uninstalled unnecessary programs

What's installed but not running has no effect on performance, boot
time or anything else. The only bad thing about having an unnecessary
program installed is that it wastes a little disk space (and that's
almost certainly unrelated to your problem).

Defraged hard drives (did a boot defrag)

Since you find performance after booting OK, it's highly unlikely that
this had any effect on the issue.

Cleaned the registry

A very poor thing to do, problems or not. Registry cleaning programs
are *all* snake oil. Cleaning of the registry isn't needed and is
dangerous. Leave the registry alone and don't use any registry
cleaner. Despite what many people think, and what vendors of registry
cleaning software try to convince you of, having unused registry
entries doesn't really hurt you.

The risk of a serious problem caused by a registry cleaner erroneously
removing an entry you need is far greater than any potential benefit
it may have.

Defraged the registry

No effect on the issue. Defragging the registry very seldom has any
effect on performance.

Got rid of all but necessary startup programs

Good, but...

(about 9 running now)

....their number (despite how often you see people telling you about
it) is irrelevant. What could very likely be a factor here is *which*
programs are starting automatically. Which are they?

Cleared the drives of all unnecessary files, temp data

Both good to do, but highly unlikely to be a factor in this issue.

Cleared the pagefile

Completely unnecessary.

Deleted hibernation file

Again, unrelated to your problem.

after this I redefraged in a way so all files would be contiguous.

Highly unlikely to be a factor.

You don't mention anything about which anti-virus and anti-spyware
programs you run and whether they are kept up to date. This could very
likely be a factor.

 

[Paul Montgomery]

I really don't want to
reinstall windows, for one, acer is so kind and don't even give you the
windows CD with the notebook, just a lame "factory setting backup
CD/DVD" you can make yourself but I've got windows and all my programs
set up the way I want and it has taken me a year to have it this.

WHAT? All that work and you don't have a backup of a working copy?

That can't be laid in Acer's lap.

 

[Tom W.]

That can be very long in some occasions, I don't want to wait 15 minutes in
a 50 minutes lesson for my laptop to boot...

Now it does it in about a minute and that's fine.


Process Monitor and Performance Tools are two good tools to analyze the boot
(Like BootVis was there for XP), the second option also provides a forced
boot preparation method.

Event logs can also provide good information on what programs are delaying
you, I guess just one of your programs or services is failing in one or
another way.


Good luck and have fun.

 

[Kayman]

On Sat, 11 Oct 2008 04:28:37 +0530, fusiooon wrote:

The only thing I haven't done is gone and reinstall all the drivers,
because usually this does more harm than good.

Not really!

Windows Vista Performance Roundtable
Join Mark Russinovich and real IT pros as they explore top of mind
performance challenges and common misconfigurations, plus tips on how to
optimize Windows Vista and improve overall system performance.
Thursday, October 09, 2008 11:20:00 AM
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/default.aspx

Springboard Series Virtual Roundtable: Windows Vista Performance...Need
Answers?
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/cc952917.aspx

(The driver issue is discussed towards to the end of the discussion).

 

[Kerry Brown]

I've been using vista on this machine for a year without any problems,
had it all tweaked out and just when everything was good (I think it was
after a windows update restart...) it took vista in the range of 10
minutes to load up and become usable. I thought it might have just been
the updates but ever since I've been experiencing this problem. Before
the whole boot up process from pressing the power button to usability
took just under 2 minutes, now it takes 10-15. After the 15 minute boot
everything works as it should, just like before. I've been trying
everything to get this resolved. It has been a month now and I fear the
only way to get vista working properly will be a format and installation
of windows. Things I've done:

Perhaps your antivirus program is doing a scan at startup?

 

[david manvell]

Start by turning off your antivirus and spyware programs. make sure they are
turned off at startup as well. Also turn off windows defender and indexing of
your hard drives. I suspect its your antivirus or spyware program that is
doing it. They usually cause a lot of issues with the system booting up.