Slow load - and I mean SLOW!

[PPRuNe Pop]

For the second time in a couple of weeks I have somehow been subjected to a VERY slow start up of Win XP. On Sunday 24th May - for over 5 hours - I could not get XP up and running. I tried system restore, which worked its socks off, but didn't help. I walked away and next morning it started as though nothing had happened! There was an alarm in the newspapers that the internet had slowed down.

It happened again this morning. I switch on and it took over 30 minutes to come to life. The router was working OK but all is well now.

What is going on lately?

Is there something I should do? I have done CHDSK on my 2 HDD's and I have another two that don't form part of startup. Normally I leave my pooter on day and night.

PPP

[mixture]

Have a peek through the logs for the most offensive date, see if you can spot anything of interest. (eventvwr and make use of the filtering functions)

You could try MEMtest to check your RAM, msconfig (or Sysinternals Autoruns for Windows ) for startup items. If you've got time on your hands and want to get your hands dirty with nitty-gritty, boot logging with Sysinternals Process Monitor is fun for all the family. :E

Also try booting in to safe mode a couple of times (not one after each other, but say a few hours/days later), see if it boots up at a reasonable pace then. If it isn't booting into safe mode quickly then you've got some deeper problems.

When was the last time you did a defrag ? When was the last time you ran disk cleanup ?

Is error checking enabled (right click C:, select tools tab, select error checking, select "automatically fix file system errors" .... okokok then reboot).

Is it definitley a boot and not user profile issue ? If you've got auto-login turned on, turn it off and try booting up ... if it boots up quickly, then you've got a corrupted user profile to deal with.

Finally, given that XP is going EOL soon, maybe its time to bite the bullet, backup your important files, erase your drive and install a newer version of windows. :E

[rgbrock1]

mixture wrote:

When was the last time you did a defrag ? When was the last time you ran disk cleanup ?

All too true. But I'd also add: When was the last time you did maintenance on the system Registry? (CCleaner does this relatively well.)

[lomapaseo]

I am very leery of CCcleaner on a Win 7 registry. I have crapped out more than once ending up with an invalid OS flag.


Anybody else have this problem?

[Milo Minderbinder]

lomopaseo

never seen that with CCleaner and I use it a lot

Pop
Slow boots like that tend to be due to
failing hard drive
bad IDE/SATA cables
failed / disabled cache memory on the motherboard (check no-one has disabled it in the BIOS)

[PPRuNe Pop]

mixture, did all you suggest after the last 'incident.'

I use CCleaner a lot too and find it very reliable.

The C hdd is a large one, and relatively new, and I have chkdisk'd it. Couple of files missing but they were restored.

Anyway I will do a full system back up with Acronis and make sure that is OK.

It is strange that this is the second time in a couple of weeks.

By the by, Milo. On that Sunday I had no emails and OE was very slow and I could not speed test broadband, and my assessment was as the 'internet down' in my area was the fault. This was similar and I am inclined to think its the ISP. I will ask questions!! The 'down time' was in the order of 5-8 hours.

Thanks for the help.

[Milo Minderbinder]

no way that internet issues could cause a slow boot. You have two separate problems there, and if it were mine I'd be worried about the hard drive

[NutLoose]

I also for years have used a programme called webroot Windows Washer, it runs on shutdown and cleans all the temp files etc from web browsing along with the recycle bin, history, cookies etc.. I used to do a lot of gaming and photoshopping etc, you will be suprised the amount of rubbish it clears off your PC when you shut down. Though I don't think they support it anymore.

[lomapaseo]

Milo

lomopaseo

never seen that with CCleaner and I use it a lot


OK :ok:


I'll do a drive clone just to be safe and try CC cleaner. either way you won't hear from me again :)

[Milo Minderbinder]

Re Windows Washer

thats a program I do have worries about. Several times I've had to pick up the pieces after it deleted key windows files. Its a memory hog as well
In my view - avoid