Start up time takes forever, help.

[Viva Las Vegas]

I usually just put my computer in sleep mode, but when I have to restart it. It usually takes 20 minutes from time I shut it down till the time it is back up and I can start running programs regularly. 15 minutes from being off till ready to go. I can only compare it to my computers at work and those are 5 minutes. What could be my problem? Or is this usual? I run Norton antivirsus & ad aware pretty frequently and my pc is clean. I have a lot of music and just a fair amount of programs. I am running windos xp. Any advice on how to speed things up or is this just the usual?

[Jewelz23]

do us a favor.

click on the start menu.
click "RUN"
in that box enter "MSCONFIG"
then after that move over to the "STARTUP" tag.
tell us how many items are CLICKED to start up when you boot.

that should be your answer...start removing things from there that you do NOT need. ALSO how much RAM do you have?

[Viva Las Vegas]

52 items. I have 256 ram. the problem is many of the items in the startup tag I'm not sure what they do as they have semi cryptic names. Thanks for the help.

[Jewelz23]

you are going to have to get that number way lower if you have 52 items starting up...for one...tell me some programs that you KNOW are starting up when you boot the pc but don't use all the time (like AIM, MSN Messenger, Quicktime, etc)...and I'll probably know the tag that is used in the startup tag.

[Jewelz23]

you can also set it to selective startup...but I don't know how comfortable you are with that.

[Viva Las Vegas]

When I boot, I assume none of the programs are starting up until I click on them? I do have quicktime, windows messenger. Basically I use this computer for web surfing, ms word, photoshop. No games. If I remove stuff from the startup such as quicktime, what effect does that actually have? Sorry for being so noob. Anyplace onliine I can look for the tags and see wether it is safe to remove them or not? Don't want to keep bothering you with a bunch of questions.

[Viva Las Vegas]

I don't even know what selective startup is, what is the possible problems with that?

[Jewelz23]

nah, computers are my hobby.

here is how it is, essentially what a startup item does is have a program ready on hand for you if you want to open up a file that is associated with that program.

so for example, if you disable the startup item for quicktime it will take a little longer for a quicktime movie file to get started initially because it has to fetch the program first so it can render your video...it does not affect playback AT ALL.

Do me a favor...trust me on this one. go through the steps again...but instead of going to the startup tab stay on the general tab and UNCLICK the "load startup items" button...then click apply...it will not affect your system at all. if you are still not comfortable you can just go back and click it again...

[Jewelz23]

I don't even know what selective startup is, what is the possible problems with that?
not much really, you are just going to have to start the anti-virus programs on your own...not that big of a deal.

[RPGLord13]

52 processes is a pretty hefty number to be running along with only 256 MB of memory. I would suggest running other adware/spyware searches to see if you can bring that # down a bit.

Selective startup is where you are telling the machine what extra processes to load when the system boots into Windows. For instance, things like Anti-Virus software general start-up right away when the computer starts. But it sounds like you have a lot extra going on. For instance, I generally have maybe 22 or so processes that ared loaded on startup.

You can research some of the processes just through a search engine to find out what exactly it might be. Although the best thing at this point is probably a reformat of the machine.

[Jewelz23]

I don't know about a re-format of the machine...if his pc is clean...

[Animeguy]

just like Jewel Said, only thing that could happen is that nothing that is not needed just will not be loaded. if you would want to load anything it will take some time but will not be running in the background. With only 256mb of ram, that is the best way to do it unless you want to pop in some ram like 1 gig.

[Viva Las Vegas]

Thanks for all the help. I'll try it... but I'm gonna have to do it tomorrow. Gotta get up early, need some sleep. Thanks again!

[Viva Las Vegas]

OK, with this info I decided to check some more because if I go to bed now I'll just think about it. I went to my general tab and selective startup is already checked. The "load startup items" is checked but greyed out.

[RPGLord13]

I don't know about a re-format of the machine...if his pc is clean...


True... hard to tell without checking out exactly what's being run, but it sounds like some junk might be running in the background that isn't being caught. But a reformat is certainly the most extreme end apart from just getting a machine.

[Viva Las Vegas]

If I uncheck something from the startup tab that is actually important what is the worst case scenario?

[Jewelz23]

OK, with this info I decided to check some more because if I go to bed now I'll just think about it. I went to my general tab and selective startup is already checked. The "load startup items" is checked but greyed out.
go to the startup tab and click "DISABLE ALL" then click apply.

[Jewelz23]

If I uncheck something from the startup tab that is actually important what is the worst case scenario?
not much, just said that in case you were a little weary of not having your anti-virus start up when you boot...I suggest clicking "DISABLE ALL" in the startup tab menu...then when you DO BOOT MUCH faster...go ahead and start your anti virus software yourself.

[WhipSmartBanky]

Download Spybot - Search & Destroy. Go to Advanced Mode. Click on the Tools tab, make sure "System Startup" is checked. Click on System Starup in the sidebar. Single click on each of the entries and read the right sidebar description of what it does (if no sidebar, click the button with the two blue arrows). Uncheck stuff you don't need. Reboot. Party hard.

[Jewelz23]

it will probably cut your boot time by like 80% lol

[Jewelz23]

Download Spybot - Search & Destroy. Go to Advanced Mode. Click on the Tools tab, make sure "System Startup" is checked. Click on System Starup in the sidebar. Single click on each of the entries and read the right sidebar description of what it does (if no sidebar, click the button with the two blue arrows). Uncheck stuff you don't need. Reboot. Party hard.
you can always go this route, but mine is easier ;)

[Viva Las Vegas]

Allright. Many thanks again. I was going and googling each item in my startup tab and finding a good deal on them. Now I'm just to tired to stay up and do more. Tomorrow for sure I'll use the spybot soft and keep at it. Much appreciation!

[captainfrizo]

Allright. Many thanks again. I was going and googling each item in my startup tab and finding a good deal on them. Now I'm just to tired to stay up and do more. Tomorrow for sure I'll use the spybot soft and keep at it. Much appreciation!

You could probably figure out what the vast majority of the items do just by looking at their folder path next to the name. If the item's path involves a folder belonging to a program you don't use/need you can take care of that right away. It's a lot easier than using Google for everything.

Hell, if you wanted to you could take a screen-shot of your start-up processes, post it here, and we'd probably be able to weed through it all in a couple of minutes for you.

On a somewhat related note, I hate when programs decide to re-active themselves in the boot-up process. When-ever the new iTunes is released and I install it Quicktime decides to start itself whenever I boot (something that Apple does with the programming), causing me to go back through the process of turning it off. That pisses me off to no end. If I don't want a program to launch when I boot-up I shouldn't have to fight it like that.

[Jewelz23]

You could probably figure out what the vast majority of the items do just by looking at their folder path next to the name. If the item's path involves a folder belonging to a program you don't use/need you can take care of that right away. It's a lot easier than using Google for everything.

Hell, if you wanted to you could take a screen-shot of your start-up processes, post it here, and we'd probably be able to weed through it all in a couple of minutes for you.

On a somewhat related note, I hate when programs decide to re-active themselves in the boot-up process. When-ever the new iTunes is released and I install it Quicktime decides to start itself whenever I boot (something that Apple does with the programming), causing me to go back through the process of turning it off. That pisses me off to no end. If I don't want a program to launch when I boot-up I shouldn't have to fight it like that.
I have to deal with that everytime I log onto AIM and MSN Messenger...it's annoying.

[Jewelz23]

what happened?