XP Slow to start up after logging in

[Ronald In 't Velt]

I've been trying for a while to fix the really slow
starting up of one of my machines. The machine boots
quickly enough, but after logging in the disk works like
mad. It takes about 3 minutes before the disk activity
settles down, and the machine becomes responsive.

Strangely, my other computer boots very quickly. The
hardware is different (the fast booting one is an older
1GHz machine, the slow booting one a 2.4GHz.) but the
software on it is comparable. Both machines run Windows
XP Pro. Both have more or less the same processes running
on it, and have the same resident software installed (like
Zonealarm). I see no significant differences in the
process list, the stuff initialised on startup (msconfig),
or the services list.

I decided to run Bootvis. Here are my findings...
- It takes 28 seconds to reach 'boot done'. Nothing
unusual.
- Login + Serv is reported to take about 150 seconds.
- Disk utilisation remains solidly at 100% upon logging
in. It drops to 0% at about 134 seconds into the login
process.
- CPU usage remains low during the entire process.
- Most Processes are created during the first 20 seconds
of the login process. Only one (rundll32) is created at
the very end of the process, after 150 seconds.

I have tried to remedy the long boot time as follows:
- Cleaned up the temp and prefetch directories. No effect.
- Disabled Zonealarm. No effect.
- Disabled all startup processes with msconfig. This
reduced startup time by about 20 seconds, no more.
- Examined the logs. No anomalies found.

Anything else I can try? Bootvis is a useful tool but it
hasn't helped me to pinpoint the problem.

 

[Gerry Cornell]

How to Troubleshoot By Using the Msconfig Utility in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=310560

HOW TO: Perform Advanced Clean-Boot Troubleshooting in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=316434

Look in Event Viewer at the logged errors and post them here and you may get some answers.

1. To open Event Viewer, click Start, click Control Panel, double-click Administrative Tools, double-click Event Viewer and select System for system errors or Application for application errors. Look for Error in the Type column and double click on Error to reveal a Description of the error. This can be copied by using Clipboard Viewer (see later).

2. Part of the Description of the error will include a link, which you should double click for further information and you can copy using copy and paste.
http://go.microsoft.com/fw.link/events.asp
(Please note the hyperlink above is for illustration purposes only)

3. For some errors you will find "+ Related Knowledge Base Article", which if double clicked takes you to the Knowledge Base Article containing a suggested solution.

There always seems to be a step 2 but not always a step 3.

A tip for posting copies of Error Reports (Step 1). Run Event Viewer and double click on the error you want to copy. In the window which appears is a button resembling two pages. Double click the button and close Event Viewer. Now start your message ( email )and do a paste into the body of the message. This will paste the info from the Event Viewer Error Report complete with links into the message. Make sure this is the first paste after exiting from Event Viewer. It can be helpful to place a shortcut to Event Viewer on your Desktop.



~~~~~~


Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
FCA
(e-mail address removed)
Stourport, Worcs, England
Enquire, plan and execute.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Please tell the newsgroup how any
suggested solution worked for you.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

[Pieter]

Hallo Ronald,

I have the same problem, even after i upgraded from AMD Athlon
650/192mb RAM to AMD Athlon 2500+/512Mb Ram.
I downloaded filemonitor (filemon.exe, sysinternals.com) and learned
that explorer.exe is opening hundreds of files on the harddisk right
after login (it seems they are randomly picked .exe, .lnk and .ini
files. Looks like Explorer.exe is 'prefetching' or something like
that) . When Explorer.exe stops doing that, the quick launch bar
appears and the system becomes responsive.... This took 1,5 min on the
Athlon 650 and 30 secs on the Athlon 2500+.
I don't know yet waht causes this, are you by any chance running
Truelaunchbar?
I'm curious wether you can find any differences between your two
systems.

Second question: is the slow machine logging on to a domain?

Pieter Hooftman

 

[Ronald In 't Velt]

I'll try that filemonitor thing when I get home and post
the results.

I heard about some prefetching going on, and I have
cleared the 'prefetch' folder in the Windows directory to
see if that made a difference (it didn't). My launchbar
appears quite quickly after logging in, but after that the
system remains busy and unresponsive for 2,5 minutes
more. I am not using Truelaunchbar, by the way.

From your post, I would suggest you find the prefetch
folder (I'm not sure where it is, either windows or your
profile directory). If the 100's of files are in there,
delete them and see if it helps. In my case there were
only about 20 files there.

Neither of my machines log on to a domain. They both
connect to a NAT router with DHCP, and they both have some
file sharing turned on.

-----Original Message-----
Hallo Ronald,

I have the same problem, even after i upgraded from AMD Athlon
650/192mb RAM to AMD Athlon 2500+/512Mb Ram.
I downloaded filemonitor (filemon.exe, sysinternals.com) and learned
that explorer.exe is opening hundreds of files on the harddisk right
after login (it seems they are randomly picked .exe, .lnk and .ini
files. Looks like Explorer.exe is 'prefetching' or something like
that) . When Explorer.exe stops doing that, the quick launch bar
appears and the system becomes responsive.... This took 1,5 min on the
Athlon 650 and 30 secs on the Athlon 2500+.
I don't know yet waht causes this, are you by any chance running
Truelaunchbar?
I'm curious wether you can find any differences between your two
systems.

Second question: is the slow machine logging on to a domain?

Pieter Hooftman

"Ronald In 't Velt" <[email protected]>

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