It Takes Way Too Long To Boot!

[ATI4EVER!]

winxp takes 1 minute and 8 seconds booting. I start the timing when the "windows xp" thing comes up and the green bars start to scroll, and I stop it when it finishes. That is way too long right?

I have tried bootxp or bootvis (whichever one improves ur bootspeed)

maybe this has to do with it? I have a 40gb HD and i only have 956mb left in it.

 

[dart321]

Virus, adware, spyware. One of the three most probably. The same thing happened to me not to long ago, a quick run of Norton fixed the problem.

 

[ATI4EVER!]

oh. ok. me try that!

 

[X|Rolando]

Give defragging a try aswell.

 

[FragBait0]

Huh? 1 minute? too long?
What about 5 minutes?

Don't go on about spyware or whatever - this thing is clean as a whistle. (im a geek and it is *my* PC after all.....MINE...MY PRECIOUS)

Argh. Maybe it is annual format time eh? They all get slow and clunky after a while.

 

[Asus]

Yes, clear your drive. Having only so much free space will kill your performance. Where will it put the page file?

Also you might be able to speed up the proccess before it begins to load windows. Some PCs check disk controllers, look for other places to boot from and do other things which may take time.

 

[Adrien C]

I had the same problem, it could be you motherboard as I had to change mine.

 

[ATI4EVER!]

yes my mobo is having big-o problems for some reasons. CMOS is effed up, I have to reset it EVERY time with F2. Damn. And it's not the battery b/c i replaced it and...nothing happened.

 

[FragBait0]

Yes, clear your drive. Having only so much free space will kill your performance. Where will it put the page file?

Not sure if you are replying at me but many people will say what you have anyway...

Sorry. Windows just gets FAT (pun?) and slow over time. Don't matter what you do.

And I guess it dosen't take 5 minutes to boot. Just feels like it sometimes... that and my odd harddrive power problems. Which I fixed after ripping every Molex plug out ond moving somewhere else.
Loose connectors. Argh.

As for ATI4EVER, I could only suggest performing the dreaded BIOS flash and/or doing a reset via jumper on your mobo.
And I don't get how so many people kill their mobo's doing it. If you get the BIOS wrong usually you can stick a floppy in with the original one which it will restore and it boots fine after that

Had to do it once after I tried changing my boot logo..

 

[Asus]

Windows XP can get 'fat' if you let it. If you install a bunch of unneeded stuff it will slow it down. If you only install the programs you really use and not all of those plugins to view video websites etc. (Just to give you an idea about the usfulness of programs to avoid)

I just reinstalled my system and from turn on to mouse pointer it takes 17-20 seconds. It was 40 seconds before I tuned my bios and resinstalled my system.

After I installed all of the same programs and plugin's I use everyday on the old installation, it is still 17-20 seconds.

 

[FragBait0]

Please spare me the newbie talk.

 

[h4vvok]

Please spare me the newbie talk.

Ok, let's dumb it down some more guys

 

[Ti133700N]

Tuneup utilities 2004 improved the boot time, shutdown time and overall system performances of my computer.

 

[blackeye]

A couple things I have learned about speeding up your boot.

1) disable all unnesecary startup items in MSconfig

2)The more fonts you have for text programs the longers windows akes to boot up. Put all fonts you dont use into a seperate folder and then if you ever need them you can put them back into the proper windows folder. (putting the fonts in a folder on the desktop will improve speeds greatly then if they were in the windows fonts folder) make sure that you keep the standard fonts in the folder though and only move the ones that arent originally with windows.

3)use the windows classic interface. (right click my computer, select properties, go to advanced tab, click settings button under performance, select adjust for best performance and click ok.

4)The less desktop icons you have the better

5)Do not use a wallpaper

6)Disable the windows startup sound. Go to sounds and audio devices and it will be in the second tab and click no sound fo sound scheme.

7)disable a windows startup screen (in msconfig)

8)Disable any unused devices in the device manager. (devmgmt.msc) You should also disable the device in your motherboard just to be sure.

9)If you messed up a videocard driver installation it will greatly increas you boot speed so make sure you run driver cleaner next time.

10)delete you prefetch folder once in a while

11)Configure your bios so that the hard drive boots first.

12)Defrag after every major uninstall or install

13)I forgot but there is a special defraggin software that will defrag your pagefile when windows is starting up so that it will increase you boot speed. (I will see if I can find the link) I believe the program was diskeeper though.

14)The more hardware you have the longer it takes to boot.

I usually take 15 seconds to boot from the time I press the button to when Im in windows.

 

[ATI4EVER!]

ok everythign is ok now. SP2 fixed it.

 

[gweedodogg69]

I'm not sure about NTFS, but FAT gets slow when it gets more and more full cause once FAT gets so full it takes more time to install because it has to search through the entire FAT table for the 1st free space and then has to write to FAT, then backup FAT, then all that directory table stuff and just takes more time. Gotta love my OS Interfaces class

 

[FragBait0]

Oh yeah and NTFS is somehow better?

Pardon me but although it's generally regarded as a more "secure" (we are talking about something by MS here...) and more "stable" (do I need to explain?) it is also supposed to be slower than FAT32. During the lifetime of my PC I changed my filesystem from FAT32 to NTFS and I have to say that nither seems much different. FAT32 lets me change folder share permissions quicker for LANs so I prefer it. NTFS likes to flog for about 10 minutes - although this is probably attributable to it's "security" features..
Blah!

 

[Ti133700N]

Yes FAT32 has a better file access time but NTFS is more secure and more stable. Also, NTFS is better for HD with alot of space. The maximum size of a file in FAT32 is 4 GB, when you do video editing it can be a problem...

 

[FragBait0]

Yes well...it's *supposed* to be more stable and secure. You won't convince me anytime soon.
As for the 4GB problem yes that's all true enough but most programs have an option to split things at 4GB.
NTFS also has a smaller cluster size for larger partitions - ie I used to have 16 or 32k cluster sizes on FAT32. Now it's 4k.
And yes, I did have 16 or 32k due to my partitioning arangments, which in trying different Linux distros changed quite a bit