Boot up times went to crap

Recently I just bought a 10,000 rpm 74 gig raptor, reinstalled all my programs and stuff. I've barely had this hard drive for 2 weeks with windows/progs installed on it, and my boot up times just went to crap. It used to take a minute or less to boot up windows, now it takes three or more. It freezes for like 30 seconds on the Welcome screen, then after that it freezes for like a minute or longer on my desktop background with just a blank screen and the mouse pointer. I don't know why this happened, and I tried running disk check, defragmenter, disk cleanup.. I don't really want to reformat but I can. I didn't have system restore enabled in my services, because I was trying out some new tweaks and disabling services and stuff. Would a registry cleaner help? I don't know what to do but I can't stand this long boot up process.

well if you have just installed all of this stuff on a new HD then you shouldn't have slow boot times. reformat and fresh install is my suggestion

i had a similar thing happen to me!
strip down your system to just the video card and install the os. then install all extra hardware after the os..
another thing you could try before you reformat is bootvis
this is a program for optimising windows xp boot times to >30sec

Also ,if ur memory isn't stable,U might have errors in ur registry.That will cause slow boots,I had that problem once. The only way to fix that would be reformat.

first run a program called TuneXP from driverheaven.net. also scan for spyware and antivirus. Also load msconfig and make sure all but the necessary startup entries are runing.

Run a HJT scan and post the log here - this will tell us what you have running at startup and what the likely culprits are. There is likely one or two programs which are slowing everything down, and a reformat is all but completely unnecesary, I would guess.

d94 said:

i had a similar thing happen to me!
strip down your system to just the video card and install the os. then install all extra hardware after the os..
another thing you could try before you reformat is bootvis
this is a program for optimising windows xp boot times to >30sec

Click to expand...

Word, thanks for the replies.

So you're saying that if I take out my sound card it will install better? I don't see how that works. Another thing that may be a problem - When I first installed all my stuff on my new hard drive, I divided into two partitions. One for the windows xp OS (10 gig) then the rest for programs and other files (64 gigs). I think the application data could be getting mixed possibly? The reason I did this is because my friend Sucka recommended that I do it, and he has his computers set up to be very organized, and easily reformattable, so I decided to try it. Would 2 partitions boot slower than one? The system (10 gig) part is only about 5 gig full, and the second part is barely full at all.. 17 gigs used maybe. I also just tried CCleaner, which is a registry cleaner, and it found 80 or more errors on my registry, but fixing (deleting) them didn't help at all.. it still atkes over 2 and a half minutes to boot up. I downloaded and ran bootvis also, but I don't know how to make use of its output. Maybe one of you guys can read/analyze the output through PM? if so that would be very appreciated. Is HJT analyzer what I should try next? I don't really mind reformatting, it just takes a long time ;p

-Peace

Do you have wireless? I know on my laptop I had it looking for so many different wireless networks at logon it was taking an incredible amount of time just to boot.

I've seen that issue also luv2... Daily almost at work on someone's thinkpad with integrated wireless.

Some people do that partitioning with their program files but I think it reduces performance - there is a lot more head travel required to get from OS to program files that way, so I like to keep it all on the same partition. I just save everything I work on to a secondary partition - including all my game saves and such - that way anytime I want I can lay flames to my install and start completely fresh. I store setup files and such on a secondary hard drive - so bringing back the old installs is very fast installing from one HDD to another.

I would still very much like to see what HJT says, you can download it here:

www.majorgeeks.com

It will be in their spyware tools section.

A direct link since I'm bored:

http://www.majorgeeks.com/download3155.html

Nope, I don't have wireless.. I have verizon dsl. I'm using AMON NOD 32 anti virus, which I got from a friend (by Eset) I'll have to check out hijack this when I get home on sunday. Thanks

Anyway to go about this without a reformat? I have a 34.7gig Raptor, and my boot time also is crap.

A HJT scan would help us get a start.

alright, heres my HJT log ;o

Logfile of HijackThis v1.98.2
Scan saved at 10:26:47 PM, on 11/28/2004
Platform: Windows XP SP2 (WinNT 5.01.2600)
MSIE: Internet Explorer v6.00 SP2 (6.00.2900.2180)

Running processes:
C:\WINDOWS\System32\smss.exe
C:\WINDOWS\system32\winlogon.exe
C:\WINDOWS\system32\services.exe
C:\WINDOWS\system32\lsass.exe
C:\WINDOWS\system32\Ati2evxx.exe
C:\WINDOWS\system32\svchost.exe
C:\WINDOWS\System32\svchost.exe
C:\WINDOWS\system32\Ati2evxx.exe
C:\WINDOWS\Explorer.EXE
C:\Program Files\Eset\nod32krn.exe
C:\WINDOWS\System32\svchost.exe
C:\Program Files\Eset\nod32kui.exe
E:\Net Utilities\AIM\aim.exe
E:\Net Utilities\Messenger\YPager.exe
E:\Net Utilities\Xfire\Xfire.exe
E:\Net Utilities\mIRC\mirc.exe
C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe
E:\Utilities\winrar\WinRAR.exe
C:\DOCUME~1\Jesse\LOCALS~1\Temp\Rar$EX00.734\HijackThis.exe

O2 - BHO: AcroIEHlprObj Class - {06849E9F-C8D7-4D59-B87D-784B7D6BE0B3} - E:\Utilities\Adobe\Acrobat\Reader\ActiveX\AcroIEHelper.dll
O4 - HKLM\..\Run: [nod32kui] C:\Program Files\Eset\nod32kui.exe /WAITSERVICE
O8 - Extra context menu item: E&xport to Microsoft Excel - res://E:\UTILIT~1\Office\OFFICE11\EXCEL.EXE/3000
O9 - Extra button: (no name) - {08B0E5C0-4FCB-11CF-AAA5-00401C608501} - (no file)
O9 - Extra 'Tools' menuitem: Sun Java Console - {08B0E5C0-4FCB-11CF-AAA5-00401C608501} - (no file)
O9 - Extra button: Research - {92780B25-18CC-41C8-B9BE-3C9C571A8263} - E:\UTILIT~1\Office\OFFICE11\REFIEBAR.DLL
O9 - Extra button: AIM - {AC9E2541-2814-11d5-BC6D-00B0D0A1DE45} - E:\Net Utilities\AIM\aim.exe
O9 - Extra button: Messenger - {FB5F1910-F110-11d2-BB9E-00C04F795683} - C:\Program Files\Messenger\msmsgs.exe
O9 - Extra 'Tools' menuitem: Windows Messenger - {FB5F1910-F110-11d2-BB9E-00C04F795683} - C:\Program Files\Messenger\msmsgs.exe
O16 - DPF: {B8BE5E93-A60C-4D26-A2DC-220313175592} (ZoneIntro Class) - http://zone.msn.com/binFramework/v10/ZIntro.cab32651.cab
O16 - DPF: {E5D419D6-A846-4514-9FAD-97E826C84822} (HeartbeatCtl Class) - http://fdl.msn.com/zone/datafiles/heartbeat.cab
O17 - HKLM\System\CCS\Services\Tcpip\..\{FBF44993-8F57-435C-A61C-BF06E3F059A2}: NameServer = 4.2.2.66,4.2.2.5

The log looks fine - was that run from normal or safe mode? You can fix this:

O9 - Extra button: (no name) - {08B0E5C0-4FCB-11CF-AAA5-00401C608501} - (no file)

When did you install SP2? Do you have automatic updates enabled?

Did you install anything around the time when the slowness began?

You should also run a gauntlet of basic things - defrag, chkdsk /f, sfc /scannow (may prompt for windows CD), as well as remove anything from the start menu startup container and set nothing to load at startup. These should be your first steps, and let us know if this fixes anything.

I would then remove NOD and/or adobe and see if there is still a problem - adobe is the devil IMO, and it isn't uncommon for AV software to cause this sort of problem. If the problem is still there after uninstallation of these, you can reinstall.

Or, you could always reformat since this is a new machine... But there would be no guarantee that you wouldn't have the same problem all over again.

ok, fixed that extra button. I've been running SP2 since I installed windows: (OS) Windows XP Professional, Service Pack 2 (5.1 - 2600), (installed for) 2w 6d 9h 23m, (uptime) 59m 45s

yep, got automatic updates on, and i've already tried defrag, chkdsk.. haven't tried sfc /scannow the only thing I load on startup is my antivirus, NOD32, and it was booting fine with that program until recently.. I installed Counter Strike because I bought the silver HL2 package, I got a coupon for hl2 with my video card, and upgraded for 10 bucks.. after I installed that it started acting up, I tried deleting the folder but im not sure how to uninstall through valve if thats even possible, and I don't know if I want to uninstall all of the valve software I have since I downloaded CS:S and hl2 through valve.

Okay, it sounds fairly likely that steam is trying to connect right at startup and that might be causing you problem - if you disable steam do you still have the issue? It should load upon startup by default.

SFC /scannow may find some corrupted files which could be causing a hang, though its unlikely. You can issue that at the run prompt, and there are directions on google if you have questions about what it does, or just ask me - its the system file checker.

NOD32 looks like an unlikely candidate if it had been running fine before.

This is just an aside, not really on topic as I have no reason to think this is what is causing your problem... I actually do not use automatic updates on my machine - I update manually so that problems are easier to trace. If an update was automatically downloaded which doesn't play nice with your configuration, you can get problems which seemingly come from nowhere. In general, automatic updates are good because most people just never would update without it being automatic - but you sound like you know what your doing fairly well, and you might also want to consider manually updating in the future.

thanks for the advice.. I'm thinking about trying manual updates, but as long as the updates for windows are displayed in the add/remove programs control panel option, does it really make a difference? you can uninstall them from there... As I said earlier, I only have one thing running on startup (one box checked in the startup / msconfig option) which is my antivirus. I'm trying out my new ATI silencer 3 right now too, I got it overclocked to 450/390 so far ;p its distracting me

forget this thread! ;p I just reformatted and every thing seems to be working ok.. except I can't change my avatar on these forums =(

Haha, sometimes a reformat is more to the point... Let us know if the same issue comes back - and make sure you install all your drivers (don't forget chipset) before you install everything else.

You might need a certain number of posts before you can upload an avatar for yourself. Make sure it meets the size requirements, and you should be cool. What error are you getting when you try to upload an avatar?