New Comp slow startup time

[WinSpecToR]

I bought this new comp in Jan and installed XP Pro on it with a Q6700 and 4gb of ram, hdd is a seagate sata2 7200rpm 500g.

I find that it takes about a min and a half from shutdown to startup until xp is ready to use, and when I first start up a program it takes about 10, 15 secs for it to load..

I don't have that many startup items and I ran spyware and came up clean.

Ideas ?

[budz]

defrag your hard drive....scan for viruses....it's best to use more than one spyware program. i use spybot search, spyware blaster and ad-aware. go to trendmicro.com and use their free online scanner....you'd be surprised at what you find on your computer.....just my 2 cents!

[Ethlred]

What sort of times are you expecting? Those aren't bad.

How much of the time is the hardware startup before Windows gets involved? You say shutdown to startup so I gather you mean when you hit the restart button till you get the login screen.

Program startup depends on the program. If Irfanviewer takes more than a second thats long. Megui just took about 8 seconds but it usually takes longer. I think it takes longer for the update check sometimes. Which is something you can usually control. Turn off the automatic updates on programs that don't need to update everyday.

How to speed up some.

Audit your startup programs. If you don't need it starting up on boot then stop it.

Defrag and defrag the directory if you can. Windows defrag doesn't do that since it has to be done outside of windows.

Run a registry repair and defrag utility. CCleaner is a free download.

Get a 10.000 RPM hard drive. Get two and use RAID but raid is a bit overrated for speed overall and does nothing with small files.

Get a second hard drive and put the page file on it.

Get a third hard drive and put your frequently used data on it and the rarely changed stuff on the second with the page file.

Get Vista. Its supposed to be faster on boot. Can't say myself.

Do downers so it will seem faster.

Read a book while booting. The Tim Benzedrine sections of the Lord of the Rings should get you mellowed out a bit so downers may not be needed.

Get off the crystal meth so the Universe no longer seems slow.

Contemplate this on the Tree of Whoe so you can better appreciate the wonders of the boot screen.

[RabidDog]

4gb ram on xp pro.. not really necessary or even usable. Check all your Hards are still in the correct dma mode. Did you do a fresh install of xp pro or just port it across ? 4 core comp does nothing for bootup times.
do a lowlevel scandisk on your hard for errors.
Get [s:1f7491bf80]Vista[/s:1f7491bf80].Linux Its supposed to be faster on boot. Can't say myself.
disconnect all external devices.
Remove all discs from drives.
Make hard first boot device.

*never run spyware it WILL infect your computer

[WinSpecToR]

I've been thinking about setting up RAID 0 to help with the performance but still deciding between that or a raptor.

At work I have a few computers running vista at 1.8ghz and 2gb of memory and they seem to start up a bit faster then mine, with about the same amount of startup items. Never ran a defrag on it.

The XP is a fresh install. HDD is the first boot device already and there are no external devices connected.

Tried linux before.. it was so so.

[ßsimian]

boot time is dependent on the software you are loading at startup. there is more loading than what the icons in the system tray show.

antivirus like norton by itself can add a minute on any system especially if autoupdate is enabled, avg v8 free is faster and lighter on resources.

firefox 3 is slow to load if there are lots of plugins and update at startup is enabled.

there are ways to turn off unnecessary winXP os services also. look at adminstrative tools/services or google for safe ones to disable if you are not familiar with it.

check msconfig for a list of what programs are loading at startup also. untick any you don't need/want.

[bevills1]

Did you install WinXP drivers?

[WinSpecToR]

I installed XP drivers already yes.

I went through msconfig already and disabled a bunch of things but it barely helped.

I booted up my friends 1.8ghz 2gig memory running vista and it seemed to have loaded faster then mine, with almost the same amount of stuff. Did something similar on a machine with the Q6600 with 2gig of memory, seemed to be faster.

[bevills1]

Did it come with a different OS that you replaced with XP? Specifically I meant the drivers for all the onboard hardware which are normally on a CD that comes with new mother board. These will be different for a different OS, and they need to be installed for the new OS for proper operation.

[TBoneit]

A minute and a half isn't that bad if you are running Norton.

I have Q6600 and 2Gig of ram. It takes about 1 minute more or less to start with AVG8 IS installed. I have a AMD 4200+ Dual core with 2Gig at work that takes more than 3 minutes to start.

One of the differences in the motherboard on the slower one spends much more time in the Bios screen Identifying drives and teh different controllers.

If you have a fancy motherboard with SATA controllers you aren't using turn them off as that will speed up startup. The more unused hardware you are loading windows drivers for the longer the startup time.

Striping two drives for more performance will give a slight boost once windows starts to load, that boost will be lost as the Motherboard checks the raid at each startup taking longer to POST.

Striping two drives will double your chances of data loss as if either drive dies then everything is lost. Mirroring will avoid that but cause a performance hit.

Good Luck

P.S. Seagate drive will be slower and noisier than Western Digital but the Seagate has a 5 year warranty if you didn't buy from a brand name computer maker. Computers from brand name makers, the drive warranty is fro the seller not the drive maker, That's how they get a cheaper price on the drives.

[WinSpecToR]

I installed a fresh copy of XP and my hardware drivers I already went to the manufacturer's website and grabbed the latest.

I don't have norton installed and I'm running avg as well. The mobo I have is DG33TL if that helps.

[jagabo]

Make sure the BIOS is set to fast POST. A slow memory test at startup can add a lot of time to your boot. My computers take about a minute to cold boot. About 20 seconds to come out of hibernation.

[budz]

I installed a fresh copy of XP and my hardware drivers I already went to the manufacturer's website and grabbed the latest.

I don't have norton installed and I'm running avg as well. The mobo I have is DG33TL if that helps.

AVG 8.0 lags badly so I uninstalled it from all of my computers. You may wanna uninstall it and see if that helps your pc boot up quicker. I'm only using free version of AVAST antivirus.

[jagabo]

AVG 8.0 lags badly

Turn off Resident Shield and Link Scanner.

[bevills1]

You might try Avast to replace AVG if you uninstall AVG and that helps. I use Avast with Win2k SP4, 5400 rpm IDE drive and 512 MB memory which takes about 45 seconds to boot, and it would boot in about 20 seconds except for registry mods made for increased security. Maybe SATA is simply slower than IDE, or maybe your system just has a slow mobo if AVG isn't the problem.

[WinSpecToR]

I'll try the fast post and uninstalling avg and see if that helps, will post back later on.

Meanwhile, think Vista will be able to perform better with my pc's hardware ?

[jagabo]

Meanwhile, think Vista will be able to perform better with my pc's hardware ?

No. Though SP1 gets it up to where it's comparable to XP.

[lordsmurf]

I fail to understand the impatience. It takes my computer several minutes to boot or reboot, because it has to re-establish network connections, attach external devices, etc. I walk away for a few minutes, get a drink of water (maybe expel some water), have a chat, see what's on tv, whatever.

Crying over 15 extra seconds strikes me as ... well .... odd.

[WinSpecToR]

its not just about slow startup time lordsmurf, theres also slower performance in xp compared to just a dual core in vista.

[bevills1]

Have Disk Cleanup and Defrag been run recently? Performance can sometimes be improved by running these periodically.

[Nelson37]

Several things to check.

First, run some real performance checks, startup and prog load times are just not a good indicator.

Check that the RAM is running the correct speed, also HD speeds.

Check a Safe Mode boot and performance.

Also, try removing half the RAM. Some boards actually suffer a serious performance decrease going to 4.