Slow booting xp home.

  • Thread starter Thread starter Macbeth
  • Start date Start date
M

Macbeth

My home pc is booting up very slowly up to 3 minutes from pressing the power
button to desktop.

I have tried various things like,

Removing as many programs from the start menu as I can (via msconfig),

Removing all programs from quick launch,

Defragmenting both drives,

Cleaning the discs and registry via ccleaner,

checking for spyware,

Changing the setting in NOGUIBOOT in BOOTINI in system config aswell as the
timeout from 30s to 10secs.
Running bootvis,

I tried booting up with zonealarm switched off it made no difference,

After all this, this morning it took 21/2 minutes from pressing the power
button to all the icons and taskbar being ready on the desktop.

When it first boots the screens with the text flashes past quickly, POST
screen?
then the screen with the white lines along the bottom, the lines fill up
pretty quickly then it will stay like that until the time from pressing the
power button is about 1 minute 5 seconds.
(I apologise as I dont know the correct term for this screen).
Windows is loading will come on and then the desktop, icons first then the
task bar. When I booted up this morning this took about 2 1/2 minutes!


I have seen so many hints tips and tweaks on various forums on the net I'm
not sure what to do now! I read somewhere that Microsoft suggest 30s boot up
on xp home, I have seen videos on youtube of 8s boot up on xp, I'd be
delighted with 30s and happy just to get below a minute.

Can anyone help?

System spec:

Mesh matrix

2 drives

1 60gb with xp home sp3 installed 30% free capacity

1 x 80gb 60% free capacity

Not connected to any home networks (does connect to 2 work networks via vpn)

Using AVG 8

Zonealarm.







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Eight seconds to boot Windows? That's ridiculous. Thirty seconds to boot
Windows? That was Microsoft's original goal for booting to the Welcome
Screen, not the desktop. And that was for the original (pre-service
pack) release of Windows XP by itself...you probably have other
applications starting with Windows, like your security software (I
hope), video driver and others.

You need to adopt a more realistic approach to Windows startup. Two
minutes or so is a perfectly fine time to get to a working desktop, so
as long you're 100% certain that your computer is free of /any/ kind of
malware, I think you should stop worrying.

And you should definitely not hack away at your operating system (e.g.,
by using registry cleaners or misusing the System Configuration Utility)
- that will hurt your computer, not help it.

Windows startup is a simple function of what demands your system makes
on your hardware. You can either reduce the load on your hardware - by
configuring resource-hungry applications not to start with Windows - or
upgrade your hardware. Pretty soon you'll arrive at the best your
computer can do. And it won't even be close to 30 seconds, let alone 8
seconds, lol.
 
What errors appear in Event Viewer?

Please post copies of all Error and Warning Reports appearing in the
System and Application logs in Event Viewer relating to the last boot in
normal mode . No Information Reports or Duplicates please. Indicate
which also appear in a previous boot.

You can access Event Viewer by selecting Start, Control Panel,
Administrative Tools, and Event Viewer. When researching the meaning
of the error, information regarding Event ID, Source and Description
are important.

A tip for posting copies of Error Reports! Run Event Viewer and double
click on the error you want to copy. In the window, which appears is a
button resembling two pages. Click the button and close Event
Viewer.Now start your message (email) and do a paste into the body of
the message. Make sure this is the first paste after exiting from
Event Viewer.

--



Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 
LOL I understand that 8s (have a look on youtube) would probably mean
changing everything and make the actual day to day running of the pc slower
and possibly less stable, but I get the feeling that I could do something to
make the machine boot quicker, even a little quicker, and still have it
stable.
What is a normal sort of boot time for an older machine? 1 minute? 2? 5?
30s to the windows screen? Ah I see, the story is that it was 30s to desktop
and ready to work.
I am not worried about it, I am curious to see if there is anything I can do
to improve it and maybe learn a little along the way. Or at least make
certain that all settings are at their optimum.
There is so much information on the web its hard to know whats true and
whats not, or who to trust!
A lot of it involves changing registry values or bios settings.
For example one suggestion is to make sure that the primary boot location in
the bios is set to the main drive. Now that makes sense to me, yet my machine
was set to floppy as primary.
Other things like changing the registry values for things like start up
delay values from 480000 to 40000 to decrease boot time,
or
Changing the registry value for waittokillservicetime from 20000 to 500 to
decrease shut down time. (I know that one works I tried it but changed it
back afterwards, yet it made no difference to my machine, making me think
theres something causing a problem somewhere. I just dont know where to start
looking)
Sound a little risky to me but thats because anything to do with the
registry makes me a little nervous!

This is something I'd never heard of before and never thought about.
http://www.pchell.com/hardware/masterslaveorcableselect.shtml

Does that make any sense?
 
Thnks Gerry I'm on a different pc at the moment I'll try to get the
information and post it up tonight.
 
Actually, not much of what you've read makes sense. For example:

Changing the boot order to boot first from your hard disk might save you
a half second, but you won't be able to boot from a CD until you change
it back - and the time spent to do that will erase any previous time saved.

Changing registry values to increase your boot speed is a fool's game
that can cripple your PC.

The internet - and the computer press - is full of silly ideas that
accomplish very little aside from giving you the impression that you're
doing something worthwhile. Don't fall for hype. There's no trick to
speeding the startup of your computer. It's as simple as I explained:

1- Be free of malware.
2- Consider what software you really want to start with Windows (and the
smart way to stop an application from starting is with the app's own
menus) and also how you've configured your applications at startup
(e.g., do you really want to check for updates every time you boot?)
3- Add more RAM (or, if you think it's worthwhile, upgrade your
processor and hard disk.)
4- Maintain your computer normally (i.e., don't become a maintenance
junkie.)

Startup speed is individual to each computer, so you can't say what's
good and what's not good. Broadly speaking, a startup time of more than
5 minutes to a working desktop is likely the sign of a misconfigured
computer or a malware infection.
 
LOL I understand that 8s (have a look on youtube) would probably mean
changing everything and make the actual day to day running of the pc slower
and possibly less stable, but I get the feeling that I could do something to
make the machine boot quicker, even a little quicker, and still have it
stable.
What is a normal sort of boot time for an older machine? 1 minute? 2? 5?
30s to the windows screen? Ah I see, the story is that it was 30s to desktop
and ready to work.
Click to expand...



There's no such thing as a "normal" boot time, and how old the machine
is is not a factor. Things like your particular hardware
configuration, what options you've set, and what programs you choose
to load automatically are all factors, and these factors can differ
greatly from one computer to the next.

Your boot time is 2-1/2 minutes. That's not particularly slow at all,
and well within the range that many people experience. If I were you,
if you're not having any performance problems after booting, I would
simply forget about it; it's a non-issue.

Here's my standard post on this subject:

My personal view is that the attention many people pay to how long it
takes to boot is unwarranted. Assuming that the computer's speed is
otherwise satisfactory, it may not be worth worrying about. Most
people start their computers once a day or even less frequently. In
the overall scheme of things, even a few minutes to start up isn't
very important. Personally I power on my computer when I get up in the
morning, then go get my coffee. When I come back, it's done booting. I
don't know how long it took to boot and I don't care.

However if you do want to address it, it may be because of what
programs start automatically, and you may want to stop some of them
from starting that way. On each program you don't want to start
automatically, check its Options to see if it has the choice not to
start (make sure you actually choose the option not to run it, not
just a "don't show icon" option). Many can easily and best be stopped
that way. If that doesn't work, run MSCONFIG from the Start | Run
line, and on the Startup tab, uncheck the programs you don't want to
start automatically.

However, if I were you, I wouldn't do this just for the purpose of
running the minimum number of programs. Despite what many people tell
you, you should be concerned, not with how *many* of these programs
you run, but *which*. Some of them can hurt performance severely, but
others have no effect on performance.

Don't just stop programs from running willy-nilly. What you should do
is determine what each program is, what its value is to you, and what
the cost in performance is of its running all the time. You can get
more information about these at
http://castlecops.com/StartupList.html. If you can't find it there,
try google searches and ask about specifics here.

Once you have that information, you can make an intelligent informed
decision about what you want to keep and what you want to get rid of.
 
Is this what you meant Gerry?
The microsoft fax one appears twice at every boot. It looks like its been
happening as far back as the log will go.

Event Type: Error
Event Source: Service Control Manager
Event Category: None
Event ID: 7034
Date: 12/08/2008
Time: 21:08:35
User: N/A
Computer: MACBETH
Description:
The LexBce Server service terminated unexpectedly. It has done this 1
time(s).

Event Type: Warning
Event Source: Microsoft Fax
Event Category: Initialization/Termination
Event ID: 32026
Date: 12/08/2008
Time: 21:08:31
User: N/A
Computer: MACBETH
Description:
Fax Service failed to initialize any assigned fax devices (virtual or TAPI).
No faxes can be sent or received until a fax device is installed.
 
Is this the thing you meant?
The fax warning appears twice at every boot.

Event Type: Error
Event Source: Service Control Manager
Event Category: None
Event ID: 7034
Date: 12/08/2008
Time: 21:08:35
User: N/A
Computer: MACBETH
Description:
The LexBce Server service terminated unexpectedly. It has done this 1
time(s).

Event Type: Warning
Event Source: Microsoft Fax
Event Category: Initialization/Termination
Event ID: 32026
Date: 12/08/2008
Time: 21:08:31
User: N/A
Computer: MACBETH
Description:
Fax Service failed to initialize any assigned fax devices (virtual or TAPI).
No faxes can be sent or received until a fax device is installed.
 
Yes. If these are occurring during the boot process it will cause a
delay.

I assume Microsoft Fax is not working. Uninstall through Add / Remove
in Control Panel.

LexBce Server service is used by some Lexmark and some Dell printers.
Does the printer work as it should or does this error refer to a printer
you no longer use?

--



Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 
Update: I have safely removed lexbce now. I couldn't remove it before as it
caused problems with application manager and print spooler, causing my
printer to dissapear. So the only thing out of the ordinary at start up is
the microsoft fax warning.
 
Macbeth

I assume Microsoft Fax is not working. Uninstall through Add / Remove
in Control Panel.

--



Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 
Cancel that. Print spool and application manager problems are back with
Lexbce disabled at start up. Discovered on first boot this morning.
Allowed lexbce to start and printer is ok.
 
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