XP - very slow startup

[Fred Marshall]

XP Home gets to "your settings" and takes a couple of minutes....

Any suggestions what could cause this slowdown / how to speed it up?

Thanks,

Fred

 

[Rich Barry]

Fred, go to Start>Run type: msconfig Uncheck those programs you can
do without on Startup. Also
check for trojans, spyware and adware if you havent already. Use these
websites

http://housecall.trendmicro.com/

http://safespy.net/Spyware_Hunter.htm

http://www.lavasoft.de/software/adaware/

http://spybot-spyware.com/trojan.htm

http://www.spysweeper.com/

http://www.kephyr.com/spywarescanner/

 

[bullwinkel J. Moose]

Windows xp loads a lot of stuff into memory. I load only ZA into active
memory but there are loasds of other stuff that goes into the ram. Go to
msconfig and uncheck whatever you don't need at startup. Remember you can
call those programs when you want to run them.

Even so it still takes 4-5 minutes for my computer to completely boot.
That's why I always leave it on. You should, in this case have an APC backup
unit so that when power fails your computer doesn't feel the strain.

 

[Bill & Debbie]

My startup has also become very slow. When I go to startup via msconfig is
see 27 items that are checked in startup. Some of them have the same name
and are listed two or three times. Only a few of them do I recognize. Is
it same to uncheck everything at startup?

Thanks in advance for your help,
Bill
P.S. What is ZA? It is not in my startup list.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

In

My startup has also become very slow. When I go to startup via
msconfig is see 27 items that are checked in startup. Some of them
have the same name and are listed two or three times. Only a few of
them do I recognize. Is it same to uncheck everything at

startup?


Although it's very likely that you don't need all 27 of these, I
would never recommend just unchecking everything willy-nilly
without knowing what you're unchecking.

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 (many programs use little or no CPU time or
RAM, and don't hurt much at all). You can get more information
about these with google searches and by asking about specifics
here.

Also, if I were you, I wouldn't get rid of something just to save
time booting. Most of us boot only once a day or so, and it makes
no sense to save a extra minute or two booting by getting rid of
something that may be valuable to you.

 

[Luke Robertson]

XP Home gets to "your settings" and takes a couple of minutes....

Any suggestions what could cause this slowdown / how to speed it up?

Thanks,

Fred

There is a tool from Microsoft called bootvis.exe
It is no longer supported by Microsoft, and can't be downloaded from
their site, but if you search, you can probably find it somewhere on
the internet.