Win Xp slow startup

  • Thread starter Thread starter David De Smet
  • Start date Start date
D

David De Smet

Hi,

I have some problems with PC's running win Xp.

All pcs are up to date (ie. all updates are installed) and automatic updates
are on in several stages. (notify, download, install).
All pcs have installed microsoft update (<--> windows update)

When the pc's start up they are really slow during the first 15 minutes.
However after 10-20 minutes they speed up to their normal working speed.

I guess it has something to do with defender and with automatic updates
since these services appear to take a lot of I/O and cpu during this period.
There is 1 svchost (which i can't figure out to what it points) which also
takes a lot of hard disk activity and cpu time.

Since this happens on all pc's I think it is MS related since they all have
different programs installed. Apart from Office (depending on the case
office 2000, office xp and office 2003) and Win Xp Pro.

Can anyone point out where to search and what I can do as a remedy for this
or at least find out effectively what is causing this.

kind regards

david
 
There is 1 svchost (which i can't figure out to what it points) which also
takes a lot of hard disk activity and cpu time.
Click to expand...

That svchost is running a 'child', wuauclt.exe. A possible reason that
it's spiking so highly is that it's checking the reg keys, files on the
system, etc. Suggest you do this, which *will* remove the update history
shown on MU/WU, but will speed up scanning and reduce the amount of
CPU's being consumed by svchost -

Stop the Automatic Update service on the affected systems
Delete the *contents* of the WINDOWS\Software Distribution folder
Restart the AU service
Also, clear out the User Account Temp folders, IE's cache, and the
WINDOWS Temp folder.
There are *some* poorly written programs that require files stashed in
the Temp folders. Without knowing what's installed on the systems, I'd
tread lightly when dumping the contents. All files that end in .tmp
should be safe to delete.
Also, check the size of the WindowsUpdate.log (s) that are located in
%windir%. It's safe to delete the *contents* of the logs if they've
grown larger than say 2 MBs. Do *not* delete the log itself as it will
be recreated by the AU service.

MowGreen [MVP 2003-2007]
===============
*-343-* FDNY
Never Forgotten
===============
 
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