Which model computer do you have?  Have you added any new software or hardware recently?  Do you have an USB card reader devices attached to a USB port?  What stage of the boot process seems to be taking so long?  What programs are running from startup?

Steve

System Works will cause considerable delay . . you can click on Start . . Run . . and type msconfig . . click on Start-up and uncheck anything there that is not necessary ( likely a lot )  You will have to guess at some of it, but you can always go back and enable.  When you restart, you will get a window that says you are running in Selective Startup Mode . . just check the box that says do not show and click ok.

wrs

 

jaybeee,

actually if your computer has been unformatted for a very long time say 1 year or so, then windows will most likely start up slow, i don't know about now (cause i only have my notebook for about 5 months), but i'm talking based on my desktop experiences, so you might want to backup and format. by the way what processor are you running? it may be the case that it's normal for your processor speed, i mean after you installed all the programs and etc. you may want to go to this website and take a look at what microsoft has to say:

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/sysperf/fastboot/default.mspx

or you can download microsoft bootvis, which is no longer supported by microsoft, and you can download it from some sites elsewhere, like majorgeeks.com, the program will analyze your bootup process and you can see which part of it, as asked by volcano11, is taking so long. and you even have an optimisation option, but i don't think that'll do much good, but you can download the program and analyse the situation of your computer first. hope that will get you a better startup time of less than a minute.

if you are running the "resident" "teatimer" in spybot/tools, some people have reported that that slows down their boot time.. also, there may be some settings in nav that you can change that will speed up the boot time..

Thanks for the quick response!

I just updated Spybot and it was "teatimer".  Can I remove teatimer without removing Spybot? Or should I just remove Spybot altogether and see if that effects boot time? And I'm not sure what Nav settings are.

JB

 

Thanks Steve, for a quick response.  I have added software, but I can't remember if it's the time of the slow boot happening.  From the XP pro logo appearing to accessing desktop shortcuts is over 2 minutes.  I have 2 printers and a mouse regularly attached to USB.

JB

Thanks for your help.

I downloaded bootvis and I think I made it run, the help menu is not all that helpful.  Now, who do I talk to about reading all the graphs and charts?  When I shut down my computer and re-booted, the time was great.  I tried it a second time and the time was good, but the third time it was back to over 2 minutes

There are a lot of websites that have start-up lists and their recommendations of what to keep and what to dump. I guess I'll try to pick some to get rid of, there's 20 listed. I have had Systemworks for a year with no problem, so my feeling is that it is something else. (I can disable auto protect in systemworks, but it just comes back again when I re-boot.)

Thanks, JB

Perhaps a bad file in the prefetch folder? I believe you can delete the prefect folder and WindowsXP will rebuild it. But it's outside my area of experience.

you can disable the teatimer in spybot by unchecking it in spybot/tools/resident (in advanced mode). i think you can adjust some settings in nav too so that it will not do a scan at startup, but i am not sure about that since i don't use nav.. also, you can look in start/run/msconfig to see it there are some programs running at startup that you don't need to be doing so.. (you can also check that in spybot/tools/startup, and you can remove items from there within spybot)

Message Edited by redwolfe_98 on 06-07-2004 08:23 PM

There's more to Spybot than meets the eye!  I don't have a check on teatimer.

JB

jaybeee,

why not do away with spybot altogether? install lavasoft ad aware personal edition, it's free but it doesn't have auto guard on, so you just have to run it whenever you feel like checking for spyware, if you want to purchase the pro edition, it comes with autoguard. and the program doesn't affect booting time.

as for bootvis, look under boot activity and analyse the graphs, see where it's taking you so long to boot up, you can tally with the cpu usage to see if your cpu hasn't been able to power up to full power during booting if you're using p4 mobile. this program was intended to see what affects your boot up and so that you can determine what's wrong.. since you said from bios to windows it takes about two minutes, i am reminded of a virus attack i once had which crippled my machine to 5 min bootup time.. you may want to just reformat the drive to save you the trouble of getting to the root of the problem and start over again.

Thanks for your suggestions.  What's the most "painless" way to reformat the drive?

JB

If you are going to reformat anyway, why not try clearing your prefetch folder first and see it that helps.

Open a command window. Type in "del c:\windows\prefetch\*.* /q" (without the quotes) press enter. Close the command window and reboot.

i think the most painless way to reformat is to put in the windows xp cd and boot from it, at the screen reinstall xp but make sure you are given the option of choosing where to install it and then delete the partition with windows or your second partition but leave the 30-40mb fat32 partition as that holds your dell diagnostic, unless you don't want it anymore then you can remove that partition too. ask the installation to format into ntfs long not the quick one. and reinstall windows.. hope that works..