why is my PC so slow to start up?

Hi all,

My PC is a Compaq Presario 900 laptop, with Athlon XP1500 and 256Mb RAM iirc. HD is a 30Go, with around 2Go free.
Hasn't been reformated (sp?) for around a year ... perhaps less.

It takes over 5 minutes from the point where I press the button to being able to actually use it.

I used the msconfig>Startup thing and disabled like 3/4 of the programs. Run AdAware and SpySweeper on a regular basis, as well as Norton AntiVirus. Didn't play in the Services part of msconfig since I dunno what I'm doing in there ...

I usually have 35-40 running processes during normal use ... would that be the culprit?

edit-forgot to mention, during use, it's fairly normal. Not fast, but never been anyways. It's just the startup being annoyingly slow.

 

Go to Start, Run, and type "msconfig"

You can select what you want to load at boot.

Becarful what you click on however.

 

I forgot to add....


Do not alter the General, System INI, Win.INI and Boot INI tabs

Under the services tab, Make sure that the "hide all microsoft services" button is checked. Now you can disable needless services.

Under the Startup tab, You can disable the autostart of programs.

 

Already done that. Only the mandatory are starting ... most useless junk is unchecked.

 

If you already have done that then my next suggestion is to run adaware and check for spyware.

 

LOL, done that too, deleted everything it found!

 

LOL!!!
maybe I should READ the whole post.

Was it ever fast at one point?

 

Well ... seems like it's been going down, steadily. It was definitely faster before, although I wouldn't be able to say how much faster or how long ago excatly. It just wasn't annoyingly long to boot.

 

Well, your hard drive is almost 95% full, I find that the more crap I have on my HD, the slower my computer runs

 

try just running a simple defrag.

 

defrag ... you might be on to something here!!! Had forgot about that ...
Will try to get rid of some files to free up some space too...

 

Also, your registry may be too bloated. Given that you only have about 2GB left in your HD, you probably installed tons of programs, which would've put in lots of entries in your registry. When Windows starts up, it runs thru the registry, so the more entries you have in the registry the longer it takes.

Uninstall programs you don't intend to use, then use some registry cleaning programs to clean out the remaining excess entries.

 

So I defragged, freed up a lot of space (7Go free), used some random registry cleaner off the web ... and I still don't see much change.
I timed it a 6 minutes from the moment I press the button to the moment the HDD stops blinking like crazy. Is that normal considering the specs of my puter(256Mo Ram, Athlon XP 1500, 30Go HD, WinXP Home with SP2, Norton Internet Security, Spysweeper and PrevX running on startup)????

I can't even just put it on standby because the idiot starts again after 15-20 minutes, usually when it's in the backpack, in the trunk of the car, left overheating properly for a good hour. Doh.

Is there anything I could be missing?

 

...don't tell me you are putting that thing away when it's on standby...

 

I did once. Hoped I could skip the 4-5 boots per day ... no such luck! I have to shut down (5 minutes) and reboot (6 minutes) every single time ... blah!

 

5-6 minutes is slow. What o/s are you running, XP starts up much faster than W2k. Also found a total re-install of the o/s can help, and re-install just the apps you want. They always seem to slow down with registry junk etc. Also 256MB is a bit small for today's computers - recommend min 512MB. I'm running 768MB on a laptop I use just for email, and 1GB on everything else.

CNet just did a review of antivirus apps, and they claim TrendMicro uses a lot less system resources than Macafee or Norton, might be worth a try. I hate AV on laptops and have a few other options, always seems to turn reasonable experiences into hourglasses.

 

I would try downloading BootVis [made from Microsoft], which was built generally for this problem to make faster Windows boot up.

We tested on a friend laptop, before BootVis optimazation it usually took 1 min, after BootVis we got it under 30" seconds.

Hope this helps.

I think that's it http://www.softpedia.com/public/cat/12/2/12-2-1.shtml