Extremely Slow Boot-up

[wwaag]

Has anyone else experienced this? About every 5th or 6th time, my system boots very sloooowwly! Normally, the wallpaper appears with the icons. However, when the "slow boot" occours, the wallpaper appears with no icons and the system appears to "hang" for 2 to 3 minutes. During this time, there appears to be no disk activity as indicated by the red acitivity indicator. I'm running multiple copies of XP Pro on my multi-boot system and it occurs only on those on which Zone Alarm is installed. It's really not a showstopper since it eventually boots, but it's still a bit annoying on those occasions. Any suggestions? Thanks in advance.

wwaag

[3Simon7]

Your anti-virus program might be updating before Windows is
allowed to fully load.

Mine does that.

edit... My answer won't help if Zone Alarm is the problem.
Maybe it will help somebody else though.

[normcar]

Delete as much garbage out of your startup as possible. I run Win200, but someone should be able to tell you how to delete as many startup programs a possible. I have excluded everything from my startups except AVG antivirus, and a popup stopper. Many programs add themselves to your startup when you install them. However, you can run them without having to have them in your startup, which uses memory, system resources, and increases startup time. Exclude as much as possible.

You might want to exclude Zonealarm, and manually start it while you are deciding what is creating the biggest problem.

Why are you running so many copies of XP?

[redwudz]

You might look at this from the Zonelabs forum. http://forum.zonelabs.org/zonelabs/board/message?board.id=gen&message.id=37733

That sounds like the problem. Unfortunately not really any simple cure, except to not let it load at startup or use another program.

[kush]

Another possibility is a failing HD..I had similar turtle-like boot times on my old S462/AMD system, started a few months or so before completely dying..I had always blamed it on the pos power supply I had at the time - but then I started getting bad scandisk checks, BSODs, RAID volume not getting detected @ POST, HAL not found errors, the extremely slow boots and so on...Which eventually manifested itself in a total lack of ability getting past the POST screen/RAID vol getting detected at all...

Bottom line, defrag/scan (and be sure to check for errors while you're @ it). Also, look into downloading a HD checker from your HD's manufacturer (ie: WD's Data Lifeguard).

[edit] Missed the part about *only* occuring on the ZA enabled partition(s)..Definately try disabling ZA, if only to test if it's the culprit.. If memory serves, I recall a 4.5.x release being recalled for such a problem...

[wwaag]

Thanks for the replies. The Zone Alarm thread suggested by Redwudz seems exactly the problem, although mine is not nearly so bad (a couple of minutes versus 5-10 min). I disabled "on-access" scanning and will see if that makes a difference. Since it only does this infreqeuntly, I'll just have to wait.

normcar asked "Why are you running so many copies of XP?". Just went through a "clean install" process so now I have an OS for "normal, everyday stuff--office, financial, etc.", another for video editing only, another for media-serving only, and the last one which is the clean install itself with very limited program files. With this setup, my editing and media-serving performance are improved and I have a clean copy of XP whenever I need to "start over" and re-install all my program files. Works well for me.

wwaag

[fLYtRap]

Go to START -> RUN, type MSCONFIG, click ok and the windows configuration tab will open. Under STARTUP uncheck everything that you think you don't need. If you can't recognize what is waht than do it 1 at the time restarting computer after each chanhge.

[redwudz]

If ZA is doing what you want, and you don't mind the slow boot, go with it. All antivirus/antitrojans have to load updates and do scans sometime. Doing them at startup would not please me, but if it gets the job done, OK.

But you might also look around for alternatives. Just to keep up with the latest programs and protections.

[InXess]

Repair your Windows, this looks like a device driver issue. Check Safe mode, if it loads normally then have a closer look at the devices (also software devices - VXD's, may be corrupted, ZA loads its own device-service). Go through event viewer, there should be a hint. Remove/repair/reinstall offending software (ZA?).

[Bjs]

Download and run hijackthis ... it is far better than the system "msconfig" , which is almost useless .

Run a scan ... you will get a list of bho's (browser helper objects such as yahoo , google , ect)
Also list's all startup programs .

Place check in box in suspected startup item's , such as that rotten qtask tray ... it's a pain , and hit "fix" , and there gone ... still available , just not loaded at run time .

Bho's will need to be killed off before pc is shutdown as when you run the browser , they may have been called and loaded , should any of these be required ... they will remain loaded which is carried over too the next system restart .

You will also notice registration value's in the scan ... it is worth while looking through this list for items that dont look normal ... if in doubt , visit the forum on hijackthis web site and you get good advice if an item is valid or not .

It makes no sence to have such items as yahoo messenger , quicktime , and others running from startup ... when you need to access the programs , do so by the provided shortcuts and the system will load them .

Beaware of old scanners that came with ocr software ... they will load something called "wowexe" , to kill it you need to remove ocr???.exe first , then the other will unload .

Another item not required most of the time are printer task tray icons ... finding out how much ink is left can be done via acessing the printers control dialog , and running the prefered printers tool .

Try removing and printers , scanners , webcams , ect , connected via usb and system startup should improve , almost double .

[ahhaa]

I have the problem of extremely long logoff/saving your settings time: 3-4 minutes sometimes. Happened on this MS KB description of the USER PROFILE HIVE, which I'd never heard of before:

WHAT IS UPHCLEAN
================

UPHClean is a service that once and for all gets rid of problems with user profile not unloading.

You are having profile unload problems if you experience slow logoff (with Saving Settings for most of the time while logging off), roaming profiles that do not reconcile, or the registry size limit is reached.

WHY DO PROFILES NOT UNLOAD?
===========================

Many system and service processes do work on behalf of users. When the work is done the system or service process is responsible for releasing handles it has to the user profile hive. If this is not done by the service as the user logs off the profile cannot be unloaded.

This problem in code can be caused by improper coding either in Microsoft software or 3rd party software (e.g. printer drivers, virus scanner service, etc). With the information provided by the system there is no way to find out what software needs to be corrected to allow profiles to unload.


With your multi-XP system, its possible you are rebuilding your user profiles everytime ZoneAlarm updates.

[wwaag]

Thanks for all of the replies. I think (hope) that my problem is finally solved. After spending some time on the Zone Alarm forum, I found that slow start-up is not an un-common complaint. Initially, I disabled the option to start ZA when Windows starts. No problems. I then manually added ZA to the list of programs in the Startup folder. Again, no problems. Now ZA is the last program to load and everything seems to be OK. Boot times are now consistently around 40 sec, which isn't too bad for my old system. Once ZA starts, it still takes a bit of time, but at least the 2-3 minute waits seem to be gone. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

wwaag