why is this laptop so slow ?

[joecass]

I recently purchased a used HP Pavillion ze2315us on EBay for my 8yr old neice. The seller stripped all bloatware and installed Windows XP Home with Service Pack 2. When I got it, I installed all the Msft updates, including Service Pack 3 and I E 8.
The computer runs fine, but it is so damn slow booting up, takes almost 5 minutes ! There are no programs or games on it,
it had 512mb of PC2700 memory with 128mb dedicated for video, so I upgraded the memory to 1GB. Didn't help.
Specs are AMD Mobile Sempron 1.8Ghz, 128mb cache, 4200 rpm 60Gb hd, Windows XP Home with Service Pack 3, ATI Radeon Express 200m IGP, 15.0 inch XGA TFT Brightview screen, 802.11 b/g wireless LAN, DVD/+R/RW combo drive.
So where does the problem lie ? CPU ? hard drive ? Windows XP Home ? Something has to be wrong somewhere......

[mh2360]

It might be worth checking the Device Manager to make sure all the drivers are present and correct, you should also visit HP's site to see if there are any updates for this model.

One update from HP's website caught my eye:

Provides a fix to prevent an issue where the primary IDE channel transfer mode setting changes from high speed mode (DMA mode) to the lowest speed mode (PIO mode) after the notebook has been suspended and resumed multiple times.

ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq/sp30501-31000/sp30914.exe

[ranchhand]

1.8 GHz Mobile AMD Sempron

This is a slow processor, under 2GHz. This unit has only 128MB L2 cache, very low even for a notebook. The hard drive is 4200RPM, not the typical 7200 for a normal drive. In addition, it is running at 333 front side bus & memory not the top-end 400FSB. Put it all together and you get slow. Please don't misunderstand me, it is probably a great little unit for a kid. I will admit, 5" is pretty bad. You might want to run a Hijack This scan on it and see what is loading; if you have a lot of BHO's and toolbars loading it definitely will slow you down.

[lordsmurf]

5 minutes is about on par, given the OS and CPU/hardware

[AlanHK]

I recently purchased a used HP Pavillion ze2315us on EBay for my 8yr old neice. The seller stripped all bloatware and installed Windows XP Home with Service Pack 2. When I got it, I installed all the Msft updates, including Service Pack 3 and I E 8.
The computer runs fine, but it is so damn slow booting up, takes almost 5 minutes !

Is the "5 minutes" before or after Windows starts?

There is usually a "fast boot" option in BIOS that skips memory tests and such, you'll know soon enough if that doesn't work anyway.

I have a ThinkPad X24, slower processor and less RAM than that, it boots up to XP pretty quick (never timed it, but much less than 5 minutes).

Sounds like it had a vanilla Windows install. That may not include special drivers it needs.
In Windows, check the Device Manager and see if there are any "!" meaning a bad or missing driver. Either update or disable such devices so Windows doesn't spend time trying to find a good driver.

Far too much software sets itself to start on boot. Aside from slowing the PC down, these occupy RAM. For instance, MS Office likes to set itself running as soon as you boot so it seems faster when you actually use it. But if you rarely use it, turn off the preload.
Get Startup Control Panel and see what is loading. Turn off any stuff you don't need (you can always turn it back on if you actually need it, or run stuff on demand).

[mh2360]

5 minutes is about on par, given the OS and CPU/hardware

I had an old Sony Vaio with a 1Ghz Athlon and 384mb of RAM running XP Home, and that would boot up in just over a minute.

5 minutes for this machine is far too long.

[usta]

In addition to what was commented above, I would suggest to strip down the software. There is not much you can do about the hardware, but you can start by removing all unnecessary software. For example, is she going to use MS Access or Powerpoint? Further XP can be stripped as well (nLite).

[redwudz]

Most all laptops ship with 'power saving mode' turned on by default. Unless they changed that, they will run slow. I had that problem with my HP laptop. If you don't plan to run it on batteries a lot, change it to 'High Performance' or whatever HP calls it now. Otherwise the CPU will run at about ~1/2 speed and everything will be slow.

With that said, it should still boot up quicker than that. Something seems amiss. You might try running msconfig. Type that in a command window. There you can temporarily and selectively kill some of the startup processes to see if one of them is the culprit. My older HP boots up fairly quick, just a bit slower than my average desktop computer. Takes about 12 seconds to get to the first XP pro screen and about a minute total to completely finish the boot. I run XP Pro with it. It's a HP Ze 4101

[MJA]

sadly I don't recommend any laptop based on AMD CPU anymore.

heat is major issue with AMD chips plus they are years behind Intel

I'm not sure if this will work.try to create a light copy of XP using free programs like Bart PE Builder or nLite http://www.nliteos.com/ then reformat the laptop with it.

[free is better]

i have 2 ze4600 laptops running XP2 with athlon xp2500, got them on ebay. they both boot under a minute but i loaded the os onto a clean hard drive. if you are in possession of the programs you need i would recommend wiping the drive and starting fresh.

[MJA]

fresh from recovery CD means he is going to install all of the crapware again on his laptop

[DNomados]

5 minutes isnt that bad especially if it hard resets.

[MOVIEGEEK]

fresh from recovery CD means he is going to install all of the crapware again on his laptop

Yep, I'll bet that is what's slowing the bootup.
Use PC Decrapifier and CCleaner to delete or disable unwanted programs.
If that doesn't help then the HDD is failing, 4200rpm also doesn't help.

[joecass]

Thanks for all the tips and advice. I loaded all the drivers from the HP support page.
There's absolutely no bloatware at all, no MS Office, Powerpoint or anything similar.
After I installed the memory upgrade, I went to HP's website to do a health check on all peripherals, everything checked out fine. Once XP boots, the laptop runs
at a reasonable pace, and no problems surfing the Internet with a wireless LAN connection.
The battery is not used 'cause it drains in about 10 minutes, so it's always plugged in
with a charger, and never goes into suspend or sleep mode.
Maybe the problem is in the BIOS, I will check that out. Other than that, I was
wondering if the CPU can be upgraded but there doesn't seem to be any info on the
motherboard that I can find. Maybe a better CPU and faster hard drive will help.
The child is very happy with this laptop, this is just a 'personal' issue with me. I've been building my own desktops for 12 years, I've never seen anything boot up this slow.

[JimmyS]

Here are a couple of things I use when when trying to optimize a new setup.

Download the HiJackThis executable item from here:

http://www.trendsecure.com/portal/en-US/tools/security_tools/hijackthis/download

It is a standalone app. (no install req.) Put it in its own folder and run it from there, as it will keep a backup archive of any changes you make in case they need to be undone. The system scan does a very good job of showing you whats loaded at startup and allows you to shut it off. If you kill somthing that causes your system any grief, the config button at the bottom right of the scan screen will get you to the backup area as well as a number of other useful utils.


Then go to this site:

http://www.blackviper.com/WinXP/servicecfg.htm

Here is a very comprehensive list for optimizing Windows services on your machine. I usually keep a list as I disable them in case I need to restart one of them.

[redwudz]

The CPU is likely soldered into place and not upgradeable. If it's just a boot issue, then msconfig is still a good tool.

I doubt you would see much of any improvement with a new hard drive. Even an older 4200RPM hard drive would be fast enough for booting. You can look in BIOS, but laptop BIOSs are pretty minimal. I would check to see if the hard drive is set as the first boot device and if you want to dig a bit deeper, look in the boot.ini in the Windows folder. May be some sort of delay set there.

What part of the boot process is slow? The intitial boot before the first XP screen? Then that's when the drivers are loaded. If it's after the XP screen, then it's likely a software program interfering, such as a antivirus or some other type of software that's scanning. Watch your hard drive light and see it there more HDD activity than during a average boot.

If you want more info on the motherboard and the installed hardware, try SIW. It will give you a lot of info: http://www.gtopala.com/ There's a freeware version there.

[ranchhand]

Another thing that you can check on is to enter the BIOS and make sure that your Front Side Bus is actually running at 333 (it may list the option as 166, but double that because you are running DDR memory and you post at 333). It may have defaulted to 133 (266FSB) which is really slow. The specs that I saw on your machine show that it should be running at 333 FSB. It can make a very big difference in performance.

[jollyjohn]

Do you have Norton anti virus by any chance?

[joecass]

There's no Norton Anti-Virus on this machine. I'm not in possession of the laptop, my neice has it, I may be visiting in the
next week or so. The CPU is not soldered in according to the manual, so possibly it could be replaced. As far as I remember,
the boot process before the XP screen is slow, and much, much slower after. There were no conflicts in Device Manager
that I can remember, I suspect maybe Windows XP Home is at fault. The EBay vendor stripped the hard drive and
installed his own version of XP Home, I usually load my computers with XP Pro. I will be able to evaluate the situation
more thoroughly once I have the laptop in my hands again. Thanks.

[AlanHK]

I wouldn't even think of replacing the CPU. If it's possible at all, probably nothing much faster would be compatible.
About the only hardware upgrade worth considering for a laptop is to max out the RAM.

It does seem likely that Windows is not configured the best.
Get all the drivers etc from the manufacturer.

One thing is to defrag (JKdefrag is good and free) and then set the pagefile to a fixed size, usually 1.5 time the RAM.
See http://www.serverwatch.com/tutorials/article.php/2177271
Default is on demand, which leads to fragmentation.

[cwb]

I've been building my own desktops for 12 years, I've never seen anything boot up this slow.

I gotta' agree here... I don't think you could intentionally make anything take 5 minutes to boot up, unless the default times for some boot process have been modified longer. The worst I ever saw was this HP dv9xxx, which had 70 processes OOB, and still took no more than 3 minutes, with Vista.

I vote hardware. Stick in a Linux CD, and check performance...

[jagabo]

I don't think you could intentionally make anything take 5 minutes to boot up

Go to the BIOS and turn off the CPU caches. You'll easily hit 5 minutes! Something for the OP to check.

[drjtech]

One update from HP's website caught my eye:

Provides a fix to prevent an issue where the primary IDE channel transfer mode setting changes from high speed mode (DMA mode) to the lowest speed mode (PIO mode) after the notebook has been suspended and resumed multiple times.

I haven't seen a response fro the OP as to whether his HD had switched to PIO. That will definitely slow down a computer.

-drj

[SingSing]

Don't waste your life to power up your laptop.

Goto your control panel, slect "power options", goto "Hibernate", and enable hibernation, then goto advanced tag, and change ".. Power button.." to Hibernate.

Now it takes only 60 second to bring up and down your laptop.

[Super Warrior]

1.8 GHz Mobile AMD Sempron

This is a slow processor, under 2GHz. This unit has only 128MB L2 cache, very low even for a notebook. The hard drive is 4200RPM, not the typical 7200 for a normal drive. In addition, it is running at 333 front side bus & memory not the top-end 400FSB. Put it all together and you get slow. Please don't misunderstand me, it is probably a great little unit for a kid. I will admit, 5" is pretty bad. You might want to run a Hijack This scan on it and see what is loading; if you have a lot of BHO's and toolbars loading it definitely will slow you down.

I disagree, that notebook, including the CPU has plenty enough power to run basic/mid-level stuff effectively.

My current laptop/netbook has a 1.6Ghz Atom CPU w/only 512 L2 cache. Runs things fast, even when on powersaving mode(1.2Ghz).

Its probably a driver/OS issue. I'd reformat the thing ASAP when a fresh copy of WinXP SP3 home, and make sure to track down the CORRECT chipset & device drivers.

Afterwards i'd move onto stuff like the hardware itself. The HDD might be ready to take a dirtnap and is performing badly. Replacing it with a fresh new one could help(HDDs are inexpensive these days).

[donschjr]

Is there a built in network connection? If you have one try disabling it to see if it helps, Pc's can hang looking for the network.

[JimmyS]

Here is one more item that I remember causing some occasional grief. Go into the Folder Options control panel. Click the Offline Files tab and make sure "Enable Offline files" is not checked.

[ocgw]

A free copy of Windows 7 x64 and cheap 8GB memory stick for ready boost would make that laptop roar

I put Windows 7 on 1 customers "craptop" already lol

ocgw

peace

[Wile_E]

The market is so flooded with different CPU types, it's almost hard to keep track of. Just because two processors are both rated at the same speed, ie.(1.6GHz), doesn't mean they are the same. A newer core will always be much faster. Instead of increasing clock speed, manufactuers are now optimizing the cores in different ways. That is what is making them faster. So you can't just look at processor speed alone.

For example, you can't expect an old Pentium 4 at 3.8GHz to be faster than a newer processor that only runs at 2.0GHz. The newer at lower clock speed will almost always win. I don't look at processor speed when buying anymore. I look at what the core is in the CPU and when the CPU was released for sale. This gives me a general idea on the performance I can expect.

But to answer your question, yes that processor is slow, and the memory very minimum. For a kid's computer it should still be okay. But I personally wouldn't run anything less than 4GB memory. At work I had to use a laptop with 2GB memory with Vista on it. It was slow.

[CobraPilot]

You might try a non-destructive Windows XP reinstall:

http://www.informationweek.com/news/windows/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=189400897

(Be sure to read the user comments which have been added long after the original article was written for some pitfalls to avoid, such as NOT using an unattended OEM XP disc.)

A quote from the third paragraph, concerning this technique:

"This option lets you completely and nondestructively rebuild, repair, or refresh an existing XP installation while leaving already-installed software alone (no reinstallation needed!). It also leaves user accounts, names, and passwords untouched and takes only a fraction of the time a full, from-scratch reinstall does. And unlike a traditional full reinstall, this option doesn’t leave you with two copies of XP on your hard drive. Instead, you end up with just the original installation, but repaired, refreshed, and ready to go."

This quote states exactly what my experience has been. Although I haven't tried this with a Win XP SP3 machine, I have resurrected and rejuvenated several SP2 desktop and laptops, including a Compaq laptop just recently, which kept hanging at the "choose the user" screen. It now boots through just fine. The others were operable, but this rebuild improved performance noticeably, especially on an old 1.1 ghz AMD CPU-powered HP laptop.

If/when the need arises, I plan to try this with a slipstreamed SP3 Win XP disc unless I run across something that suggests it won't work with SP3.

As always, "your mileage may vary."