Long bootup

[Jim1]

Hi to all: Slow boot on Dell E310 desktop running XP Home. System boots to the desktop in less than a minute, 45 sec. But, after it appears, trying to do any work is delayed by the addition, I suppose, of additional drivers, or something or some sort of scan running in the background. It's an 80 Gb 1.5 SERIAL ATA drive. But in checking the My Computer properties it is only showing as 69.83 Gb. I know about the discrepency in the Gb, but that seems a tad out of whack. On defrag, I'm getting two red lines that simply will not disappear, and now thinking maybe the hard drive has problems. Ran all the antivirus/antimalware programs onboard, and from a known, good operating system via usb port. All checks out without a problem. When the system finally does finish the boot process, all items selected respond quickly,and without a problem of any sort. It's just the time it takes to bootup the system from start to where full operation is possible. Ha 512 Mb of mem, and I'm going to bring that up to the max, for this unit, of 2 Gb. Even with everything disabled in the Config, startup file, the boot still takes considerable time. The disk check and mem all check out okay. Has Verizon and an all-in-one printer, and Verizon security, and Spybot, etc, though I've run the hard drive on a known, good machine with all updates, and nothing reported as bad. Figured I'd try the new memory, and then, if still balky, set it to Hibernate and see what happens. Again, all is well when the boot completes, and I can access some files, programs while the unit, after desktop displays, still continues its boot or loading drivers. Thoughts? Much thanks, Jim S

[Midknyte]

80,000,000,000 / (1024^3) = 74.5

Newer Dells have a recovery partition. That's where your space went. Check Disk Management.

There are some system files that cannot be moved by defrag. That is normal. I hope you are not using the built-in defragger. Defragging doesn't do much for performance anyway.

You need to look at what processes are running at startup. Sounds like something is eating up a lot of resources when you login. Spybot is rubbish, so I hope you are running better antispyware.

[Train]

Are the antivirus/antimalware programs set to run on boot up?

After 3 years, I am just about ready to do a clean install myself.

[Jim1]

Hi and thanks: Yeah, so far (new memory hasn't arrived fro 'egg), I've tried just about everthing but a reinstall. Would like to avoid that. System has Verizon Security Center running, and I'd suspect it might be doing an auto scan at bootup.Also has skype, the hp all-in-one (I know that slows down boot, since I have a J6300 series) and it sure slowed down my boot. I pulled everything from startup in config and it still labored to a full bootup, beyond the desktop. To the desktop everything is fine, then it seems to grind on. Even did a restore point to Aug. 9th, and still the slow boot. The lady has a scanner, and some weird programs that I hate to mess with , not knowing what they're really for. I'll wait for the mem and see what happens there. Should be some improvement though. Jim S

[Midknyte]

If the Verizon Security Center is running as a service, you wouldn't see it listed in the msconfig startup apps. Check services.msc and see what is running at startup also.

If the hard drive is thrashing the pagefile at startup, the extra ram will probably help.

[Jim1]

How to enter the services.msc? Via admin tools, etc.? Memory should be here in a day or so. There is a restore partition, but I'd prefer not to have to use it, but then again......Jim S

[Midknyte]

just type services.msc into the start-run box. It's also in administrative tools in control panel. You can also access services from msconfig (different tab from startup).

[slickcondo]

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Good luck !