Windows slow to load

[Loretta]

Computer has 1.3GHz processor 512MB memory, 60GB hard drive with Windows XP
only on it. It is taking 3 minutes to load from power on to desktop(no
welcome screen on at this time.) I had repartitioned, reformated and
reloaded windows xp w/sp2. Was working better untill the updates were done.
The reason I did the repartitioning and reformating was because it was
having this issue.
Loretta

 

[Daave]

Computer has 1.3GHz processor 512MB memory, 60GB hard drive with
Windows XP only on it. It is taking 3 minutes to load from power on to
desktop(no welcome screen on at this time.) I had repartitioned,
reformated and reloaded windows xp w/sp2. Was working better untill
the updates were done. The reason I did the repartitioning and
reformating was because it was having this issue.

1. Did you defragment after installing SP 2 and the subsequent updates?

2. Which anti-virus program do you use and how is it configured? It's
possible that your anti-virus app is scanning your entire hard drive
each time you start Windows.

3. Also it's always a good idea to be aware of all your
programs/processes that automatically load; there are probably quite a
few you don't need.

4. Make sure your free of malware (viruses, trojans, spyware, etc.)

5. Other than taking three minutes to load (which is not necessarily a
problem!), is your system sluggish otherwise?

For #3 and #4, see:

http://www3.telus.net/dandemar/slowcom.htm

 

[Poprivet]

Computer has 1.3GHz processor 512MB memory, 60GB hard drive with
Windows XP only on it. It is taking 3 minutes to load from power on
to desktop(no welcome screen on at this time.) I had repartitioned,
reformated and reloaded windows xp w/sp2. Was working better untill
the updates were done. The reason I did the repartitioning and
reformating was because it was having this issue.
Loretta

"working better until the updates were done": That sort of says you might
be low on diskspace. A partitioned 60 Gig drive isn't meaningful in this
context yet; you've really provided dismally little information:

-- XP What? Home? Professional?
-- SP2 is installed? If not, stop; that's most likely why it's slow on a
small drive.
-- Desktop? Laptop? Vendor?
-- What is the whole size of the Boot Drive/Partition? Use My Computer
icon to get these.
-- How much free space is there on it? It has to be more than 15%-20% free
(12 Gig) of the whole drive for optimum performance. MyComputer icon is
probably easiest place to get these.
-- Do a Defrag if you haven't already. Then analyze; if it still says it
needs defrag, run it again. Depending, it might take three times to defrag
it all.
-- By "reformatted" and "repartitioned" do you mean you deleted the
partition, recreated the partition, then formatted and reinstalled things?
If not, it didn't throw away/recover all the space available.
-- Look in Event Viewer to see if there are any errors there. If so,
report them here. Help will tell you how to get to that viewer.

Three minutes to boot up isn't necesarrily bad for a boot time, depending on
a lot of things. More information is needed though.

HTH
Pop`

 

[Gerry Cornell]

Lorreta

How large is each partition and how much free disk space? Are the
partitions formatted as FAT32 or NTFS? Right click on each partition
in Windows Explorer and select Properties to get this information.

What version of Windows XP do you have? Does your Windows XP CD
include the SP2 update or did you install SP2 from the free special
SP2 CDs distributed by Microsoft in 2004 or download SP2?

Are there any yellow question marks in Device Manager? Right click on
the My Computer icon on your Desktop and select Properties. Hardware,
Device Manager. If yes what is the Device Error code?

Try Start, Run, type "sigverif.exe" without quotes and hit OK. What
drivers are listed as unsigned? Disregard those which are not checked.

Look at the Error and Warning reports in the System and Application
logs in Event Viewer for before 08/01/2007 08:04:30 and after you
started your computer. Please post copies. Please do not post any
Information Reports.

You can access Event Viewer by selecting Start, Control Panel,
Administrative Tools, and Event Viewer. When researching the meaning
of the error, information regarding Event ID, Source and Description
are important.

HOW TO: View and Manage Event Logs in Event Viewer in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308427/en-us

Part of the Description of the error will include a link, which you
should double click for further information. You can copy using copy
and paste. Often the link will, however, say there is no further
information.
http://go.microsoft.com/fw.link/events.asp
(Please note the hyperlink above is for illustration purposes only)

A tip for posting copies of Error Reports! Run Event Viewer and double
click on the error you want to copy. In the window, which appears is a
button resembling two pages. Click the button and close Event Viewer.
Now start your message (email) and do a paste into the body of the
message. Make sure this is the first paste after exiting from Event
Viewer.

--

Regards.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

Computer has 1.3GHz processor 512MB memory, 60GB hard drive with
Windows XP only on it. It is taking 3 minutes to load from power on
to desktop(no welcome screen on at this time.) I had repartitioned,
reformated and reloaded windows xp w/sp2. Was working better untill
the updates were done. The reason I did the repartitioning and
reformating was because it was having this issue.

Three minutes doesn't sound at all bad to me. My personal view is that the
attention many people pay to how long it takes to boot is unwarranted.
Assuming that the computer's speed is otherwise satisfactory, it may not be
worth worrying about. Most people start their computers once a day or even
less frequently. In the overall scheme of things, even a few minutes to
start up isn't very important. Personally I power on my computer when I get
up in the morning, then go get my coffee. When I come back, it's done
booting. I don't know how long it took to boot and I don't care.

However if you do want to address it, it may be because of what programs
start automatically, and you may want to stop some of them from starting
that way. On each program you don't want to start automatically, check its
Options to see if it has the choice not to start (make sure you actually
choose the option not to run it, not just a "don't show icon" option). Many
can easily and best be stopped that way. If that doesn't work, run MSCONFIG
from the Start | Run line, and on the Startup tab, uncheck the programs you
don't want to start automatically.

However, if I were you, I wouldn't do this just for the purpose of running
the minimum number of programs. Despite what many people tell you, you
should be concerned, not with how *many* of these programs you run, but
*which*. Some of them can hurt performance severely, but others have no
effect on performance.

Don't just stop programs from running willy-nilly. What you should do is
determine what each program is, what its value is to you, and what the cost
in performance is of its running all the time. You can get more information
about these at http://castlecops.com/StartupList.html. If you can't find it
there, try google searches and ask about specifics here.

Once you have that information, you can make an intelligent informed
decision about what you want to keep and what you want to get rid of.