Hello all

My laptop takes up to 2 minutes to fully boot up, I've disabled all non essential systems in msconfig and done thorough scans with AVG, SpyBot, and DrWebCureit.

Any ideas?

If you haven't "cleaned house" in a while, this aids in better machine performance.

Clean Up
A good (free) "cleaner" for removing junk from your system is CCleaner. It also performs a "clean-up" pass on the registry.
CCleaner - Download
(Click on Download from FileHippo......, in the PayPal box)

Alternate Download;
|MG| CCleaner Slim (No Toolbar) 2.15.815


Once you download and install it, open the program then click on (left hand side) OPTIONS, then COOKIES. Any cookies you want to save (trusted sites, places you have usernames/passwords), highlight them in the left column, then (using the directional arrows between the panes), move them to the right hand column under "Cookies to keep".

Still under Options, click on Advanced. Remove the check mark from the box for "Only delete files in Windows Temp folders older than 48 hours".

Leave all other settings at the default.

Then click on Cleaner (on the top left). When that window opens, click on Run Cleaner (bottom right of the window.)

When it finishes, close CCleaner, and restart your machine. (Some files will not be deleted until a restart is performed.)

I do not advocate running CCleaner on each boot. I run it once or twice a week.


Defrag
Once you've cleaned up, defrag your hard disk. Here are some (clean freeware) links to defrag programs which can be considered better than the stock windows defrag program.

Auslogics - Download Auslogics Disk Defrag
(Uninstall any previous versions before installing the latest version.)

Defragment Disk | Smart Defrag | Free Disk Defragmenter Download

|MG| Diskeeper Lite 7.0 Build 418

JkDefrag v3.36


Post back with your results and any further questions.

Hello Dan

Thanks for the quick reply :-)

I always clean up regularly and use CCleaner and magical defrag.

I did have a lot of shortcut icons on my desktop which I have now cleared away and that seems to have helped but I still think 1 minute 20 is slow for a boot up.

What's the average boot up speed?

Ed

What's the average boot up speed?

Well..... this depends on your hardware and O/S. Two different machines (ie; 866Mhz/384 Mb RAM, and a 2.4Ghz/2 Mb RAM, both with the "same" O/S installation,) will certainly boot differently.

Speaking of Link clean up, I have a Win 98 (I believe) windows program that checks for dead links and removes them. It works in XP. (It only checks the O/S drive for dead links.)

Just run it, and watch the hard disk LED on your machine. When it slows to just an occasional blink, select the links, and exit.

Ok Dan Thanks for all your help, I'll let you know how I get on.

Regards

Ed

Additional thoughts/suggestions..... The typical "slow boot-up" questions;

What loads/runs in the background at Startup?
Are they required/essential?
Would a shortcut do to start the application only when required?
Everything that starts consumes resources. And takes longer to boot/setup.

Are you "online" at bootup?

Has any new software been recently installed? Does it perform automatic updates?