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re: Solutions to ''Slow System Startup''
Friday, January 23, 2004 at 12:10 pm
Windows XP Annoyances Discussion Forum
Posted by Raj
(1 messages posted)
Hi Ben,
your suggestions seem great however I haven't been able to try them out
yet. My computer (Dell Dimension 8100) was working great (well in my opinion) and
it would boot up in about 45 seconds from the XP logo.
Three days back I was trying to fix the 'Unmountable Boot Volume' error on a friend's
computer and had to switch the monitor, mouse and keyboard between the computers
a few times (and I was doing so after shutting down each machine). I had too boot
my computer several times during this troubleshooting / fixing process. However,
at then end of this 4 hour ordeal I put the cables back into my computer .....and
tried it boot it......it took close 20 minutes to do so...the computer was pretty
much stuck at 'starting windows XP' for almost 15 minutes....and then was stuck again
at 'loading personal settings for 3-4 minutes' Even after it got to the desktop it
took another 2-3 minutes for the icons to load up...and the start bar dissappeared....all
the network connections dissappeared...and finally a message popped up saying 'something
tried to change the Noton Anti Virus settings...this is eminent of a Virus Attack...please
hit OK to revert the setting changes'. After hitting OK a message popped up saying
'Norton Anti Virus auto protection could not be enabled'. I tried to set up my dial
up connection and after the process no icon would show up. When I tried to repeat
the process it would give me the message ' A connection in that name already exists'.
Other programs were working ...however at 1/5 the speed at which they normally do.
I rebooted the machine several times and saw the same behavior pattern everytime.
Then I tried to uninstall Noton Anti Virus but it kept giving me the message 'Windows
or other applications is using this program and cannot be uninstalled now'. I then
took out all Symantec application from 'msconfig' and still got similar messages
while trying to uninstall. I tried to do a 'chkdsk', 'fixboot' and 'fixmbr' from
the recovery console and nothing helped. I also tried to boot up the machine in the
safe mode and still things were equally slow. I did a few other things and nothing
has worked.
I have a dual boot system and when I try to boot with the Windows Me OS things work
just fine.
Please help in any way you can.
Thank you,
Raj (anand101@hotmail.com)
On Friday, January 3, 2003 at 1:51 pm, Ben wrote:
>This list is "Designed for Windows XP", although I didn't receive the logo.... :-)
>
>1. Defrag your hard drive. Use the built in XP defragmenter (dfrg.msc). It's the
>only one that properly optimizes your system's prefetching to speed up boot time.
>
>2. Go to Microsoft's website and download BootVis.exe. It will optimize your prefetching
>even further than the built in defragmenter. Use both to get the best results:
dfrg.msc
>first, then BootVis.exe->Tools menu->Optimize. Also, you can use it to benchmark
>your boot time before and after system tweaks and software installations.
>
>3. Go to Start->Run... and type or paste "Rundll32.exe advapi32.dll,ProcessIdleTasks".
> This will start a built in optimization routine that runs in the System Idle Process
>and shows up as "rundll32.exe" in task manager. It normally runs automatically
every
>3 days. It will run for 15 mins to half an hour, so don't try to do anything too
>intensive while its running. If you get sick of it running, you should probably
>log off or restart to be safe, rather than killing the process.
>
>4. Delete anything that you don't need in the Start->Programs->Startup folder, and
>in the Registry under HKLM->Software->Microsoft->Windows->Run and HKCU->Software->Microsoft->Windows->Run.
>
>5. Go to Start->Control Panel->Administrative Tools->Services or go to Start->Run...
>and type "services.msc" to display services running on your machine. About 1/3
should
>be automatic, 1/3 should be manual, and 1/3 should be disabled, IMHO. If you don't
>know which to change, search google for "XP services" and read one of the many webpages
>that describe each service.
>
>6. Use a partition manager to create a separate partition for your swap-file. Set
>its size to about 2.5 times the amount of physical RAM you have. You can do this
>by right-clicking my computer and selecting Properties->Advanced tab->Performance
>section->Settings button->Advanced tab again->Virtual Memory section->Change button.
> Whew! They don't make that one easy to get to. Just don't completely remove your
>swap file, cause your system might not boot after that, unless you have a lot of
>physical RAM.
>
>7. Repeat steps 1-3.
>
>Ideally, XP on a clean install should boot in about 12 seconds from the time that
>you see the XP logo to useable (can open a program). With all my device drivers
>and third-party utilities, the best I can acheive so far is 18 seconds on my Dell.
> Don't use Norton SpeedDisk!--It may slow your XP system boot time by about 6 seconds.
>
>I have messed around with this a lot, to say the least, and I plan to build some
>utilities to make it easier and give them away for free in the future. Wish I had
>a web address to post here, but I'll be around here in the future, so check back
>in this discussion forum if you are really interested, or look for my utilities
in
>the next few months on download.com in the Utilities section.
>
>Good luck,
>Ben
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 |  | re: Solutions to ''Slow System Startup'' (Raj: Fri, Jan 23, 2004, 12:10 pm) |
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