Boot time slow?

[archcommus]

I'm running XP Pro SP2 with all the latest updates, system specs are in sig. Only startup items are NOD32, Sygate, PeerGuardian 2, and AIM. Boot up takes about 16 passes of the blue bar on the Windows loading screen. I'm not sure if this is abnormal or not but to me it seems a bit lengthy. I've already defragged and ran the Optimize option in Bootvis, neither seemed to help much. SHOULD it be much faster than this, and if so, what's holding it up? I tried running a trace from Bootvis but the graph seemed to have almost no information on it, not sure if I did something wrong.

 

[xes]

I recently fitted a sata harddrive in my brothers pc, and just removed his ide drive ( old slow ). His pc would then take ages to boot....ended up that it was because there was a cdrom on the ide channel that was set as "cable select" on the jumpers, but plugged into "slave" on the cable. Swapping it round on the cable fixed the slow boot.

 

[potato28]

How long has XP been installed? If over 2 years, XP bloats and take for evar to load.

 

[TheRyuu]

Reformat Every Month. That way it's sure to be fast every time 😉 (ok, not really, thats a bit extream. I normally go 6-months (or longer), a crash, or if it takes too long, whichever comes first)

But how long has XP been on there. After a while it starts to fill up with crap (spyware, viruses, other junk) that you really can't remove unless you totally do a reformat. When it boots as slow as you say, it's time for a reformat (or ghosting 😉).

 

[Tenshodo]

You should reformat every year. Also, it might help if you got a fast HDD.

 

[archcommus]

This install is about a year old. My drive is an ATA100 120 GB Seagate, 7200 RPM, not brand new and blazing fast but not exactly old and slow either. I definitely have no spyware or viruses at all, it's a completely clean system. My startup items are exactly and only what I listed above. What else could make it take this long? It seems like installs of certain programs or Windows updates are what usually lengthen it, even if they don't add any startup items.

 

[archcommus]

Bump if anyone else has any suggestions or ways to investigate what it's loading and when. Like I said, Trace from Bootvis didn't seem to really work right.

 

[idea]

google microsoft's utility "bootvis" it will optimize your boot times and even show you a graphical representation of what is slowing it down.

 

[corsa]

how did u run Bootvis?
Heres how its done, 1st make sure Task Scheduler is set to Auto - very important, otherwise Bootvis will not complete its Boot Trace or Optimization tasks after rebooting.
Run the program and go to the Trace menu, then select 'Next Boot + Driver Delays'.
To optimize your bootup procedure using Bootvis, first go to your \Windows\Prefetch folder and delete the entire contents. Then start Bootvis, go to the Trace menu and select 'Optimize System'. Once again let Bootvis
reboot and wait for it to restart after the reboot. It will say 'Optimizing System' for a while. Once this is done you can reboot your system and observe that your bootup times will now be much faster.
Note that if you do not want the Windows XP prefetcher to create lots of prefetch files for various applications then make sure to set the Task Scheduler service back to Disabled and delete everything except for Layout.ini in your \Windows\Prefetch folder after finishing all of the above steps. In theory these prefetch files are meant to help in improving loading times for applications, however they simply increase the overall Windows startup time in exchange for barely noticeable improvements in application and game loading times. The Layout.ini file is the main file Windows needs to maintain optimal boot layout.... you can thank tweakguides 😉
Ohh u should also use Startup Inspector and get rid of what u dont want starting...

 

[zerocool84]

like said above, reformat. the only sure way to get rid of everything

 

[Googer]

Originally posted by: idea
google microsoft's utility "bootvis" it will optimize your boot times and even show you a graphical representation of what is slowing it down.

BootVIS does nothing to improve boot times. The only thing that BootVIS does is provide a graph of things that load during startup, it was intended to help software developers optimise their programs in Windows 2k/xp. Running BootVIS will tell you what order and how long certain are taking to load during startup. Quite often a it's few un-needed services that are the culpret of a slow boot (extended win xp logo w/bars). After the boot Check your start up list by going to the run prompt and typing: MSCONFIG. Also Use Spybot Search and Destroys advanced tools as an aid in decrtypting the start-up list.