Windows XP General Slowness

[Philippine Mango]

I have noticed in every instance of windows XP that the machines load up pretty quickly but when it gets to the desktop it takes like an additional 30secs to 2 minutes to FULLY load. All of these systems have ethernet adapters and I notice when I first gets to the desktop it's there but response for programs is slow and network connections don't work either. Is there a way to fix this?

 

[FearoftheNight]

sounds like startup lag...maybe disabloe alot of services?

 

[VirtualLarry]

That's the way that XP works. It boots rather async compared to W2K, and it will let you get to the desktop (after login), before all services have loaded and initialized. You are probably seeing lag because the services are still loading at that point.

 

[hopejr]

I think personally that sucks (yes, I've noticed it too). The OS should be usable as soon as the desktop appears.

 

[duragezic]

Originally posted by: hopejr
I think personally that sucks (yes, I've noticed it too). The OS should be usable as soon as the desktop appears.

Mine is. XP boots very fast on my machine and I have nothing to load once I see the desktop. You either got something wrong or just way too much services and programs starting up.

 

[hopejr]

prolly to many services. 2k3 doesn't act like that tho.

 

[Philippine Mango]

no its not like I have a lot of programs starting up, I just notice that I can move around on the desktop and everything but I notice that I can't go online because the networking hasn't loaded yet. I know I have no programs on start up so I have no explanation for this slowness. A full additional minute for it to load just so my networking loads... This is entirely retarded and I have no clue why it does this. Would this go away if I had SCSI drives?

 

[VirtualLarry]

Have you checked your Event Logs (Application and System) to see if there are any programs, processes, services, that are trying to start up at boot time and failing? The often retry several times, so that could be one cause of a delay during startup. Anothing would be any hardware-related errors showing up in the System event log, that could likewise indicate problems.

Another could be some internal things that Windows' is doing, to install any updates that might have been automatically downloaded and installed during your previous Windows' session, although those should not be present on every single reboot.

 

[dunkster]

I would check:
- How many startup processes?
- How many processes running at system idle?
- How many running processes are necessary system processes?
- Are some processes bogus - such as adware trojans?

My system is ready for all operations about 20 seconds after normal display appears, with 26 processes running at normal system idle. I don't think XP gets any better.

Check all running processes for purpose and legitimacy by googling for information about the processes by name. If a running process is not legit, you'll find information about how to remove it. If a process is associated with an application - but not necessary at system idle - remove it from the startup list.

Hope this helps!

 

[duragezic]

^^ Good suggestions here.

If you are on DHCP, maybe try a static IP to see if that speeds up your networking?

Oh, and I got 15 processes at startup, including the Diskeeper service which may or may not be able to be stopped (too lazy to check).