Long Boot Up

Hello,

I don't know really where to put this but here goes.

I have an ECS Mainboard with graphics on board(64mb) and on board sound, 320mb RAM(100mhz), 20 GB HD, CPU 950MHz and it takes forever to boot up.

I had it originally built cheaply so that my friend could have a computer when he moved into his new apartment. Well, he went crazy(literally! ) and I got it back. I got the HD completly cleaned and we put Windows 2000 Pro on it. Well, not too long after, it was taking forever to boot up. It would be anywhere from one min to 3 min for it to boot. So, I took it to a friend and he found a slammer worm on it, the power supply was undervoltaged and among other things. We cleaned the HD and put Windows XP Pro on it instead. Well, after a few good boot ups, it started to slow down its load times again, and there is nothing on the HD! It still takes forever, my other computer which I got for my sister has 192MB RAM and 850MHz and it has 10 GB of stuff and it runs 3 times as fast! She runs XP Pro too and a Biostar Motherboard.

Anyway, is there anything you guys can figure out? I have no idea what to do.

Thank you for you time,

If I may recomend a few programs....

1. Diskeeper Lite, the greatest defragmenting program to date. Can be picked up at www.majorgeeks.com

2. Spybot S&D, will kill any spyware on your pc. Found pretty much anywhere, google it or get it from majorgeeks.

3. TuneXP, can be found at www,driverheaven.net. This program is incredible. The bar on xp would go across 6 or 7 times before it was done, now it doesnt make it across once. Dont disable paging executive though, that turns off your page file and many programs need it on.

Could you reconfirm the amount and configuration of RAM you have - for 320 it would seem to be either 2 x 128 + 1 x 64 or 1 x 256 + 1 x 64? Your loading issues maybe RAM related. A weak psu would not delay your loading times but can cause instability in use. BTW welcome to the forums

Its 1x 256 and 1x 64

Yuriman said:

Dont disable paging executive though, that turns off your page file and many programs need it on. [/B]

Click to expand...

No it doesn't...
it just disables loading the system drivers and stuff into the page file, and forces it to stay in the physical ram.

When or if you fix this problem, another similar one will pop up and so on and so forth.

The only quick cure for all future problems is to partition the hard drive, install just the operating system on one partition, then whenever something goes wrong, restore that partition.

http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=214369

(I restored both my opearting systems four times in the last two days alone by the way...) It takes me two minutes. Even though I can figure out and fix most Windows problems, if I can't do it in less than 120 seconds, I nuke the partition instead, and get on with me business in 2 min.

c627627 said:

When or if you fix this problem, another similar one will pop up and so on and so forth.

The only quick cure for all future problems is to partition the hard drive, install just the operating system on one partition, then whenever something goes wrong, restore that partition.

http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=214369

(I restored both my opearting systems four times in the last two days alone by the way...) It takes me two minutes. Even though I can figure out and fix most Windows problems, if I can't do it in less than 120 seconds, I nuke the partition instead, and get on with me business in 2 min.

Click to expand...

I do basically the same but keep programs/data on a different partition so that way I only have to restore windows basically and not any programs. Does anyone know if this slows the computer down because the programs are located in different partition but physically still in the same drive. Anyone done any test?

It's 7200 RPM vs 5400 RPM that makes more of a difference and you're right that's exactly the big idea, install all large programs on another partition for a quicker image-reimage.

Microsoft has a little program called "bootvis", download it from their website and it will speed up your boot times.............

Actually, let me help you out a bit more -- I bet it's slowing down more now that you've installed SP1 and all the "necessary" patches from Microsoft. Bootvis is cool, but there's an easier thing you can do really fast...

Go into your C:\Windows\Prefetch folder, there will be a TON of files in here all with names of applications that you've used since the machine was built; delete them all. These are prefetch logging files that watch how programs start and build a bootlog of each one. Windows then references the prefetch file whenever you start that app, so that it can intelligently pull ALL the needed files in advance (prefetch) instead of waiting for the app to specifically request the file. This results in a much faster load time for applications as well as the whole operating system (there is a special prefetch file for the boot process)

Now that you've installed all kinds of patches and stuff on the OS, that prefetch file needs to be re-written. Blow them all away, and reboot the machine a few times (minimum of three I'd say) and you'll notice that things start popping back in there -- explorer, boot, etc.

Once you start seeing things repopulate in there, run disk defragmenter. Another thing these prefetch files are used for is intelligent defragmentation of the drive. Windows XP's built in defrag utility will use the prefetch files to determine how files are accessed and in what order, and will try to write them linearly on the drive so they can be read even faster.

You can knock 20-30 seconds from your boot time by doing this, even on a slow drive. Works wonders on older laptops that are running XP, also does great on machines that were just upgraded with RAID arrays.

I tried deleting the Prefetch folder my self. After four reboots the boot time was unchanged for me.


I think he's saying everything is fine when he first installs then things deteriorated later. This is not uncommon, the only way to deal with this is reimaging since there's too many variables.


Oh yea, for all you Windows XP Pro Corporate users:

go to Start Menu > Run… > regedit

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SYSTEM \ CurrentControlSet \ Control \ Session Manager \ Memory Management \ PrefetchParameters

Double click on EnablePrefetcher on the right side of the window
(It's most likely set to 3).

Boot up time was reduced by full 50% for me when this value was set to 1 (!)
Others say setting of 5 works best for them. Only way to tell is by timing the bootup.

The boot time will NOT go down by deleting the prefetch folder by itself; in fact you will likely INCREASE your boot time for the first several boots while the prefetch files are built. You must allow it to rebuild, and once it does, you must then defrag. Otherwise you are making no gains.

Lol, TuneXP does all of these things for you! Just get it!

Yuriman said:

If I may recomend a few programs....

1. Diskeeper Lite, the greatest defragmenting program to date. Can be picked up at www.majorgeeks.com

2. Spybot S&D, will kill any spyware on your pc. Found pretty much anywhere, google it or get it from majorgeeks.

3. TuneXP, can be found at www,driverheaven.net. This program is incredible. The bar on xp would go across 6 or 7 times before it was done, now it doesnt make it across once. Dont disable paging executive though, that turns off your page file and many programs need it on.

Click to expand...

He said it all. Mayb Pick up ad aware also because ad aware picks up things spybot doesnt and spybot picks up what ad aware doesnt & vica versa...

Ok guys. Thank you very much for your help.

I'm wondering where its taking so much time. Is it lagging on the boot screen...or is it showing that its loading XP for a long time?

t takes lots of time when windows thing with the bar goes across and when it is loading the desktop.

Could be a problem with the harddrive.

Maybe. But the HD is only a year old..... might have to do a few tests to find out.

Benchmark different things in your system. Check the voltages, and temperatures.