Why is pooter so slow to start?

[Honeytruck]

OK, basic stuff, but we can't all, ahem, be experts.. Please can somebody tell me why my laptop has recently started to take 10, 15 or even 20 minutes to crank up? It used to be almost instant, maybe 5 mins. Now, while the desktop comes up as usual, it's ages before it will let me do anything. Attempts just get egg-timered. It doesn't make the usual chundering noise, just sits there and won't do diddly. :ugh: It doesn't do it every time; sometimes it's quite quick like before, but 8 times out of 10 it does.
Don't understand what I could have done to cause this.
What might it be and is there anything I can do about it? Life is too short. Thanks.

[frostbite]

Assume it's running windoze?

Have you ever run Defrag? If not, do it.

Is your hard drive more than about 75% full?

[ormus55]

it might just be summat trying to start up. check your start menu and remove anything that is not essential/required at start up.

also have clear out. remove any programs that you never use now. tidy up the hdd. have a general spring clean.

you might have a virus on it. check out the other threads re hijack this and other tools.

the best solution is a format and a clean install. the thing will wizz along then. gauranteed.

remember,, backup any files that are required, first!

[jetcollie]

As Ormus55 says the gold-plated solution is a complete re-install but you could try this 'repair' option first.

http://www.pprune.org/forums/showthread.php?t=238945

You will need to go to Microsoft updates afterwards and re-install all the recent security updates.

Good luck.

[hobie]

you could also have a look through this Google search ..... some usefull info available ....

http://www.google.ie/search?hl=en&q=pc+slow+to+start+up&meta=

[ormus55]

just a general statement that will apply to most peeps PC, esp with windoze.

i reckon that after about average 9 months use, you will notice a decline in the speed of the pc, and more and more problems generally.

a clean fresh install will clear out all the garbage.

also a good idea to partition your drive into say 3 drives.
keep all your files on the D drive. and backups onto E.
use C just for the OS.

and remember to backup anything really essential onto other media. ie a cd. they cost about 10p each!
or use an online storage facility, ie photobucket for your piccys. or yahoo
etc...
also with the price of a hdd being about the same as a night out, it makes good sense to have a second/spare hdd.

domestic users are one thing, a hdd failure is not usually a major event. business users are another matter entirely. yet the number of companies that dont backup regular, (if at all!), is just amazing!
small business users are the worst offenders.

remember. there are 2 sorts of peeps with a PC. those who have had a hdd failure/major OS crash, and those that havent yet.

(sermon ends):)

[Mac the Knife]

i reckon that after about average 9 months use, you will notice a decline in the speed of the pc, and more and more problems generally.

a clean fresh install will clear out all the garbage.

Except of course for us Linux/Mac/Solaris/UNIX users who run a real O/S.....

Uptimes measured in years :ok:

[chandlers dad]

Another vote for formatting if the OS has been on the computer for over 9 months/1 year. I format my "C" drive at least once a year as Windoz loads so much crap that you cannot delete that its needed.

You do not realize how slow the 'puter has gotten until you clean it all up and reload. Until doing that, as stated above, clear out the crap out of your hard drive, get at least 25% free space on all drives and defrag the hard drive.

[frostbite]

All well & good voting for format and reinstall until you consider that many people (e.g. Dell customers, etc.) don't have the 'luxury' of a windoze CD any more!

[Cornish Jack]

ormus55
I wonder if you could give your opinion on the following musing? -
With split HDs, it is normal to use the C drive for OS and Progs and D and E for data and back-ups respectively. If (as I do), you use Fdisk to delete the drives and re-install, the sequence has to be, delete E, then D, then C, then reverse that sequence for the new drives. If the allocations were reversed, i.e. Back-ups on C, data on D and OS and progs on E, Fdisk'ing could delete E and re-install without deleting the other two drives - much saving of time etc. It could be that OSs MUST be on the C drive but I can't remember where that constraint would be stipulated. Your thoughts would be appreciated
TIA

[chandlers dad]

ormus55
I wonder if you could give your opinion on the following musing? -
With split HDs, it is normal to use the C drive for OS and Progs and D and E for data and back-ups respectively. If (as I do), you use Fdisk to delete the drives and re-install, the sequence has to be, delete E, then D, then C, then reverse that sequence for the new drives. If the allocations were reversed, i.e. Back-ups on C, data on D and OS and progs on E, Fdisk'ing could delete E and re-install without deleting the other two drives - much saving of time etc. It could be that OSs MUST be on the C drive but I can't remember where that constraint would be stipulated. Your thoughts would be appreciated
TIA

CJ,

You need the OS on the "C" drive as thats where the computer looks for it. Programs can go anywhere you wish. Get a copy of Partition Magic, its much easier than fdisk and you can modify the partitions at anytime.

I have done what you are talking about for the last 15 years, after I got tired of always re-installing everything when moving to the next "latest and greatest" windoz OS.

You really have two choices, either partition one hard drive, which is not my preference, or have two hard drives in the computer. With a laptop this is not an option, so you have to partition. With a desktop this is the best way, especially now as hard drives are so cheap.

The OS is almost always installed on the "C" drive or partition, and I put my data and programs that I know I will be using for a long time there as well. To boot, all my data, like documents and photos always go on the "D" drive. This way I have no heartburn in formatting the "C" drive as needed. All I have to back up off of "C" is my Outlook data file, bookmarks and cookies. The rest of the data resides on "D" drive and is not touched in a format situation.

What I do after this is I used to burn a CD (now a DVD) for backup, but the last year I have gotten a USB external hard drive and simply back up the "D" drive and above data from the "C" drive onto the external source. THEN as a futher backup I have my laptop that I carry with me on the road and all three are networked together. The laptop is as well backed up on the USB drive, but this also means that the majority of the information is as well backed up on the laptop. Three systems are not going to go down at once, so most of my information will be saved.

Frostbite,

The Dell customers have the luxury of a Dell "restore" CD, which has the OS already on it. Once you have backed up your data, simply put the CD in the drive and reboot the computer. It should boot off of the CD and follow the prompts to format the hard drive and restore not only the OS but all the installed programs AND the drivers. Much easier.

Only change I do with this is to Fdisk (or use Partition magic, much better) to partition the hard drive on my Dell laptop into two partitions. Then the Dell CD asks if you want to restore the partition format to factory, say no, and it installs everything on the "C" drive, keeping your "D" drive for data.

[Keef]

I agree that the "wipe and reinstall" option is the best way, but I've got all kinds of stuff on here that I don't even remember the source of. Trying to find it all again is a nightmare - I had to do it once, when the laptop's hard drive died, and I had to do it earlier this year when I bought a new home PC. But I'd rather not...

If the machine is taking 20 minutes to boot up, and the HD light isn't flashing, then something pretty basic is wrong. You could switch to Linux (I like Fedora, but I'm not brave enough yet to use it as the primary system - give me time!). Work on the assumption that there's something "adrift"...

Do you have more than one computer, and are they networked? Do you sometimes boot the one with the other turned off, and sometimes with it on?

How full is your hard drive? Double-click "My Computer", click on Drive C, then right-click and select "Properties". If it's over about 75% full, a bigger or a second hard drive is indicated.

How much memory has the machine? XP is 'orrible in less than 512 Meg (but not 20 minutes to boot up 'orrible).

Otherwise, you're into "Hijack this" - see the stickies at the top of this forum.

[chandlers dad]

If the machine is taking 20 minutes to boot up, and the HD light isn't flashing, then something pretty basic is wrong. You could switch to Linux (I like Fedora, but I'm not brave enough yet to use it as the primary system - give me time!). Work on the assumption that there's something "adrift"...

Do you have more than one computer, and are they networked? Do you sometimes boot the one with the other turned off, and sometimes with it on?

How full is your hard drive? Double-click "My Computer", click on Drive C, then right-click and select "Properties". If it's over about 75% full, a bigger or a second hard drive is indicated.

Even if the hard drive light is flashing or not, 20 minutes (even 5) is too long. Something is wrong here.

A second hard drive will not only add more room but usually they are faster. Get a 7200 rpm drive that has a faster access speed. Transfer the stuff off of the "C" drive to the "D" drive. You will notice a big difference. RAM memory has no effect on bootup BTW.

[Saab Dastard]

Fdisk has no knowledge of drive letters.

The OS assigns drive letters - it will assign C to the primary partition marked as "Active" on the first hard disk (primary Master on IDE systems).

The OS will (usually) then assign drive letters sequentially first to detected fixed disk partitions, then to removable drives. That is the default behaviour, though it is possible to re-assign drive letters to all but the A, B and C drives (again, there can be exceptions) in Windows 9x and NT+.

Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000, Windows Server 2003, and Windows XP Professional define the “system” and “boot” partitions differently from other operating systems (typical MS). The system volume contains files that are needed to start Windows XP Professional, i.e. Ntldr, Boot.ini and NTdetect.com (other files may also be required for multi-boot systems or SCSI disks - these are the bare minimum).

The boot volume contains Windows XP Professional operating system files and folders such as systemroot and systemroot\System32. The boot volume can be, but does not have to be, the same volume as the system volume.

Therefore it is possible to have Windows "installed" on ANY drive "letter", as long as Ntldr, Boot.ini and NTdetect.com are on the System Volume - i.e. primary active partition.

Confused? :rolleyes:

SD

[Cornish Jack]

Thanks Chandler's Dad - I understand the basics of that, but Saab Dastard's little exposition is the sort of thing I was thinking of ........... but in a MUCH, MUCH, MUCH simpler form. :ooh:
Probably the twin HD route makes most sense.

[Keef]

Shortage of memory will slow it down, but not usually that dramatically.

There's an easy way to find out: it's worth trying this -

Click Start - Run
Type in the box the one word msconfig
Click the "Startup" tab that appears.
Untick everything (it'll stay there, so you can re-tick it later if need be).
Click "Apply"
OK your way out and restart the machine.

It will warn you about having turned stuff off - leave it off until it's rebooted fully, and see how much faster that was.

If it's still slow, that wasn't the problem and you can re-tick everything.

If it now starts quickly, then try turning stuff on one or two at a time till you find those that really slow things down. Are they packages you actually need running in the background all the time?

[Honeytruck]

Thanks very much all. I did a defrag a few weeks ago, so assume that won't help. I've also deleted all superflous progs i.e Those that came with MS Works and which I never use. If I've picked up a virus or something that takes up masses of space, I can't think how, since I only use the pooter for e.ms and a bit of light, non-pornographic surfing.
But from the replies, what I have to do is uninstall Works/Words, delete anything else (having backed it up first) and start again? Yes?

[Gertrude the Wombat]

But from the replies, what I have to do is uninstall Works/Words, delete anything else (having backed it up first) and start again? Yes?
You can if you like, but you risk spending a lot of time and gaining nothing (unless do you actually completely wipe the disk and reinstall from scratch, something I've only done once since Win3.1 and that because I couldn't be arsed to find out how to upgrade NT to 2k and change domains at the same time, and then as it's a laptop you've a fair chance of ending up with a dooprstop).

Better than just taking the Dixons PFY's word for it that the solution to all problems is to "reinstall Windows" (the idea that you should routinely wipe every nine months is just nuts!!) would be to

(1) find out what is wrong
(2) fix it.

Favourites for your symptoms would include:

(a) a virus
(b) some piece of software which, during starting, is waiting ages for something that ain't going to happen

and favourites for (b) would include:

(i) you installed something recently but the installation went wrong
(ii) you uninstalled something recently but only uninstalled half of it
(iii) you changed some configuration on the laptop recently
(iv) you changed some configuration on the network that the laptop plugs into recently.

In neither case is going round deleting stuff at random or reinstalling the operating system likely to do any good without a complete hard disk wipe (and as others have said that's not something I'd attempt because it's odds on that you don't have copies of all the drivers needed and you'll only find out what you're missing when the thing won't boot far enough for you to fix it).

[jetcollie]

If you still have the original Windows XP disc then before you go the whole hog and re-install why don't you try the 'repair' solution I gave the link to in post #4. Provided you follow the instructions it will not lose you any data or programs etc. This is a link to the full instructions:

http://www.informationweek.com/windows/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=189400897&pgno=1&queryText=

There are 5 pages - read them through and copy down the various steps as you won't have access to them once you start!! When complete you will have to go to windows update and re-download all the latest security fixes etc.

[JediDude]

I would say that re-installing Windows is a bit overkill tbh.

Are you using up to date AV and Anti-Spyware software?

Try downloading and running ccleaner (http://www.ccleaner.com/), it will clear out all the unused crap from your PC.

If the problem still persists I would guess that it is a program or service that is taking its time to startup. What do you usually have running in the system tray?