What does Windows XP SP2 do during long boot-up times?

[BehindEnemyLines]

I have been using Standby and Hibernation so frequently that I forgot my horrendous start-up time (on a laptop). This is very apparent when I didn't use hibernation for some reason and need it to start again the next morning. Here is the time breakdown:

00:00:00.00
---- a lot disk access here ---
00:00:42.00 --> Time when the password is entered and the Enter key is pressed
---- sporadic disk access here ----
00:01:14.00 --> Time when the Desktop background shows (just Desktop, no icons)
---- sporadic disk access here ---- seems like it's dead!
00:04:11.00 --> Time when the Taskbar first appears
---- much more disk access here, programs are loaded in system tray ----
00:05:02.00 --> Time when the laptop is usable (little or no disk access)
---- very little or no disk access here
usable

Add an additional 2 minutes if ZoneAlarm is installed. Total = 00:07:00.00 on average --> 7 minutes --> yikes!
I am getting rid of ZoneAlarm and put in Comodo Firewall.

I guess the question is what the heck does it do between the intervals. There are little or sporadic disk access especially the 3 min gap (seems like it's dead). The most disk access is between 0 and 42 sec and between 4:11 and 5:02 marks.

 

[JWade]

i read a thing about long boot up times, had to do with the network settings (both lan and wireless) i cant remember unfortunately what to change the settings to to speed up the startup.

 

[Seppe]

hey,
ok, it should be normal for a laptop to bootup slower then a desktop pc, slower hdd and stuff, but not 5-7 minutes, thats just crazy. my guess would be either to many start-up programs, or some kind of malware. possible conflicts in registry could also be a problem, u should take a look at that with some registry cleaner utility, like ccleaner.

 

[NikolaeVarius]

This happens to me too. I've defragged my laptop, registry cleaned it, crap cleaned it, cleaned up boot programs, and basically got it as optimized a sI could. It still takes 5 minutes to boot with periods of it doing absolutley nothing, then horrible lag as it loads up more stuff.

 

[Seppe]

thats odd, my laptop with vista home premium x64 boots up in 2-3 minutes... and i have nothing doing too like u said... i never tried xp on it though, but 5-7 minutes is really bad

 

[KeithTalent]

Strange. I have XP SP2 on my laptop (which I mainly just use as my TV) and it takes less than a minute to fully boot.

I cleaned everything (including the registry) with CrapCleaner and minimized all of my starting apps, so it really only starts AVS and the mandatory Windows processes.

Wish I could help you more, but maybe you do have some sort of malware, as mentioned earlier.

KT

 

[BehindEnemyLines]

I am pretty sure it's not a malware problem. Will try to uninstall unused programs (not that many either and most aren't set to load at startup). However, I do notice Windows Server 2003 will boot up much faster than XP regardless of how much software you've installed - even if they're loaded at startup. The problem is the 3 minutes of doing nothing. All the programs that are supposed to start-up in the system tray are loaded within 41 seconds.

 

[nerp]

Do you have a USB printer with memory card reader slots? I've seen this happen before because of that.

 

[Rottie]

To improve your laptop boot up you might want to check out Top Windows Vista Tweaks
Hope it helps. Good luck

 

[ShawnD1]

For curiosity sake, how long does it take to boot the computer in safe mode?

 

[BehindEnemyLines]

Originally posted by: ShawnD1
For curiosity sake, how long does it take to boot the computer in safe mode?

Tried booting into Safe Mode yields these results (averaged three tries):

00:00:00.00
--- a lot disk access here ---
00:48:00.00 --> the black screen with drivers loaded STOP and "Windows is starting up" appears
--- little/sporadic disk access here
00:02:05.00 --> the point where blue screen "Windows is starting up..." (stuck here for 76 sec)
--- a lot disk access here ---
00:02:30.00 --> desktop and taskbar loaded
--- a lot disk access here ---
00:02:40.00 --> the time when all disk access stop

We are looking at about 2:30 - 2:45 min for loading in safe mode. The laptop is not connected to any printer.

 

[JesseKnows]

I would expect that "hung" time with little disk activity is spent on network discoveries.

Do you have any mapped drives? Try unmapping them.

Try disabling the network adapter(s) and rebooting. What's the boot time?

 

[0roo0roo]

is the drive going bad?

 

[BehindEnemyLines]

Good news: I forgot my installation of Windows SteadyState and Microsoft Network Monitor 3.1 awhile ago. After removing the programs, the startup takes only 2:10 - 2:30 minutes. Maybe it was the network program that caused the huge delay.

00:00:00.00
00:00:29.00 --> Password is entered
00:00:32.00 --> Desktop background appears
00:00:34.00 --> Taskbar and icons appear
--- the majority of the time is here for some reason + 45-60sec of 100% cpu from svchost.exe ---
00:02:30.00 --> Programs loaded and hard drive activity stops

2:00 - 2:30 minutes until usable desktop

My only concern is SpywareTerminator and NOD32 now take the longest to load. NOD32 is consistently last, and I have a period of 100% cpu usage from svchost.exe immediately after startup. My only guess is Windows Update, but not too sure.