Windows very slow to load up/log in

[Steve]

I've been working on a laptop belonging to a user at my office. It takes a very long time to startup; the initial dialog box ("Please Wait"...then "Windows (XP Pro SP1a) is starting up" below that") takes a long time to change to the "Press Ctrl+Alt+Del" box. This is regardless of whether or not the Novell Client (4.90 SP2) is installed, as well as ZenWorks Agent. After pressing Ctrl+Alt+Del, it takes a long time (say two minutes in each instance) to get to the login prompt. After that, logging in and loading the desktop are okay. During these long pauses there is little or no hard disk action.

What I have tried so far:

Uninstalling all Novell network-related software - no change

Performing a "clean boot" (disabling system.ini, win.ini, etc.) - no change

Disabling Windows Firewall for all connections - helped a little, the desktop used to take a while to load, now it's okay. I've gently reminded the user not to enable said firewall.

Disabling startup entries in msconfig - didn't help much.

Disabling unneeded services - too few to make a difference.

What I haven't tried:

Ad-Aware + Spybot, etc. - doesn't seem like this would help, but what the heck.

Uninstalling SAV 8.1 Corp.- I've heard this could be a culprit.

Any other suggestions on how to get this guy's laptop to start Windows properly?

 

[TGS]

Are you using any roaming profiles?

At the local site I work at it takes around 5-10 minutes to log in with the way they have profiles setup.

On my companies VPN, it's around a minute.

Edit: Forgot to mention, try disconnecting any network cable and try to log in with a cached profile.

 

[Steve]

Thanks, those are good ideas. I'll have a look next chance I get.

One of my admins just reminded me, a possible factor is the large amount of data he stores directly in C: and I mean literally in C: He's used 10 of his 60GB and I'd say a good portion is files for/from all his database software. If nothing else would you suspect this is the cause? I can't test whether it is or not right now, I'll have to get it from him some other time.