XP Boot slowdown... why? (Fresh install on SSD)

Just threw my old 120 GB Intel SSD in my ThinkPad X60 about a week ago. Installed the latest Fedora OS, ran good but wasn't fast, and by no means SSD fast. Finally last night I got around to installing XP on it. An updated SP3 version with bundled / slip streamed updates.

Initially, it booted up fast before I loaded any drivers. It seemed to boot really fast after I installed the drivers though, including the storage driver.

For some reason now after installing several things... AVG Free & their registry tool, Chrome and Firefox, this thing now boots slower than ever. Wondering if the antivirus program is causing it, or maybe the registry tool did something? I also installed all the available windows updates once I got it online... maybe that's to blame.


Still fast after it's booted up.

XP does not automatically align the drive for you. You have to do it manually. Did you align it? If not, that's probably your slowdown.

AFAIK, it wouldn't get worse if it wasn't aligned, it would be bad out of the gate.

That said, completely normal behavior that your boot slows down after installing software. It could be anything you installed causing the slow down.

AVG is close enough to bloatware these days...and most any registry cleaner is a joke.

Also, no TRIM in XP, so hopefully your SSD has garbage collection(most do). Try leaving the pc logged off overnight so GC cam do it's thing.

GC cam?

And I'm getting rid of AVG at the moment. May put it back on if uninstalling that doesn't fix my issue.

Also... as a life long windows user, I've never used antivirus. But I also haven't seriously ran a system in probably 4 - 5 years on XP with expectations of security. In all that time I just dealt with the issues... but thought maybe something was in order for XP these days. Won't lose sleep over it either way...

GC can = Garbage Collection can.

Are you aligned? You need that for best performance period.

Guess I'll leave it on tonight

Thanks

Still wondering where my initial poor performance started from. I went from a few seconds of boot up to darn close to half a minute. Still need to reboot after some more updates & the uninstall of AVG.

Maybe if it's typed in all caps....

ARE YOU ALIGNED PROPERLY?

lol

Go to DOS and type this:
diskpart
list disk
select disk #
list partition

Offset should be 1024 KB or any number that can be multiplied with a whole number to get 4096.


I second that AVG is not the best choice out there.
As for the rest you have installed, you can do this manually or use this freeware (for Windows XP only, not for Vista/7/8) to UNCHECK software you installed and see if it affects your boot times:

Or run as ssd. It shows you if you are aligned and of course has other helpful uses. Either way...

... Is it aligned?

Never knew those diskpart commands! Thanks, will have to try and learn those.

Says the offset is 32 kb

And does that have anything to do with alignment, or would that be another performance issue?

It's not aligned. That's a huge performance hit.

Ben333 said:

Never knew those diskpart commands! Thanks, will have to try and learn those.

Says the offset is 32 kb

And does that have anything to do with alignment, or would that be another performance issue?

Click to expand...

Yes it's how it's aligned. That is why we asked that question and gave two options to find out.

As stated earlier, it's not the reason it got worse, but it's the reason its handicapped out of the gate. Secure erase the drive, align it properly and put xp on it.

Remember to format the drive under Windows Vista/7/8 instead of under Windows XP, if you can.

You can install Windows XP on it, as long as you don't format it under Windows XP before installation..

I alluded to that, but glad you said it outright. Very important to not format while installing xp after you are aligned.

I found a program, after some google searching I found some freeware. AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard Edition. Maybe someone else can verrify, but this was easy to use and seems to have worked just fine. Not bloat \ adware as far as I can tell. It recommended 2048kb size though... so I went with that.

Any multiple of 1024 is fine. I usually stick with 1024. Not sure what performance is like with larger offsets... Or if it's any different in the first place.

Partition alignment can get very over the top when discussed...

...I have been there and done that in discussion.

1. Misaligned XP with little to write and deal with can be faster than when drivers and apps and everything is finally put on the drive and then a lot of information has to be moved around not just a little to get to where one needs to get.

2. This is the gold standard for alignment as I understand it after all the discussion. And is the information that is understood by winders since that is what is being queried for information. Gparted mentioned below does align to an offset divisible by 4096 and equals greater than a decimal number, when it uses the 1MIB partition alignment boudary.

To see if your partitions are aligned correctly, hit the Start menu and type in msinfo32. Enter Msinfo32 and go to Components > Storage > Disks. Look for your SSD on the list and find the "Partition Starting Offset" item. If this number is divisible by 4096 (that is, if dividing it by 4096 equals a whole number and not a decimal), your partition is correctly aligned. If not, you need to realign it. Luckily, this is pretty easy to do with the Gparted live CD. If you have an Ubuntu live CD lying around, that will work too, since it has Gparted available under System > Administration.
RGone...ster.

Except msinfo32 does not work under Windows XP...

Now we do NOT have winguru here as I suck at windows mostly. Can barely use it. But to me and my limited understanding, M$ seems to indicate that msinfo32 should work in Win XP.
Windows XP Professional Product Documentation > Windows components
Using System Information


Microsoft's WMI diagnosis utility

RGone...

I rebooted into my Windows XP to test that before I posted

This works across the board though, if you go to DOS and type this:

diskpart
list disk
select disk #
list partition

Offset should be 1024 KB or any number that can be multiplied with a whole number to get 4096.