Hi, As a techno philistine, I'm trying to resolve a Windows start-up issue?

Question

I have a PC running Windows XP professional and, when I start up in the morning, the disc access goes on for eleven minutes before I can properly use the machine.
What can I do to reduce this start-up time?

Answer 1

Presuming you have anti-virus software, update it and run it now. Also download (free) Ad-Aware SE Personal & Spybot S & D, update them & run them to shift spyware etc. Download (free again) Ccleaner to remove a load of cr*p.

Having removed a lot of dross, this might do the trick. However, I suspect you may have a lot of unnecessary programs running at start-up. You may wish to try this:

1] Create a Restore point.
2] Go to Start - Run, then type "msconfig" (without the quotes) in the box and OK it. Go to the Startup tab on the form that appears and this will show you what is running at startup. If you recognise some of these and don't need them running (frankly, there's little that you DO need), just untick 'em and Apply, followed by OK.
3] If you feel uncertain about doing this, fair enough, just ask some non-philistine who does know what he/she's doing!

Hope this helps to a certain extent. It's all I can come up with without knowing more about your setup.

Good Luck!

Answer 2

Wow! That shouldn't happen.....about a minute at most on my machine!

You may have lots of things trying to start up at the same time. Try running MSCONFIG. Click on START and in the RUN box, type msconfig (lower case) - another Window will open and you need to check STARTUP. Just click on the tab and you will see everything that runs when you start up the PC. Remove the TICKS in the boxes of things you don't need at start up. Unfortunately, we don't know what is on your system so you will have to be careful what you 'turn off'.

Don't switch off any virus scanning or firewall software or the like!

To be honest if you are unsure you are better of getting someone to look at it!

You could also use the DEFRAGMENT option..it may be that you haven't done it and the files are all over the place on your hard drive. This facility will put them all back in some semblance of order!

There is also the fact to consider that you may have spyware or adware on the system. Removing these with the freebie mentioned in the other posts may help! Try AdAware - EasyCleaner by ToniArts or for a really deep scan of your PC download A2Squared from www.majorgeeks.com - It is free and really searches your hard drive for hidden Spyware and Adware.
Also, depending on how old the machine is, you may have to consider that your hard drive is about to croak and give up the ghost!

Answer 3

You might want to see if you have much space left on your hard disc - click start, then choose my computer, then select your primary hard disc, usually called, C:, then either right click on this and sleect properties, or else when you select it, the info on how big the drive is and how much space it has free should appear on the left, if you've got something like under a gigabyte free, then i'd look at backing up some of your files onto an external drive, or else deleting files, perhaps you have a large amount of cached web files, in internet explorer, click tools, then internet options, then delete browsing history.
without more details, can't really help to any great extent, but the fact you haven't listed a specific error message may mean this will help. If you need an external hard disc, I got one from Amazon, made by Western Digital, for under a £100 you can get a pretty big 200 gig upwards usb hard disc you simply plug into your usb port and drag and drop the files over, easy! best of luck!

|lso, you might have lots of applications firing up that you don't really need, people often end up with million of little icons sitting in the tray on the bottom right, you might want to check what all these are, if there are any, and disable any you don't need to fire up on start up.

Answer 4

Check for a CD or DVD left in the CD or DVD drive. Than try the following (if no disk was left in the drive):
- try a safe mode start-up, maybe it clears your issue;
- try a "Last known settings that worked" thing;

all these are accessible by hitting F8 at boot time

- try disabling any software that loads at start-up (do this by running Start->Run->msconfig utility, startup tab) in order to identify the faulting application;
- alternately use the Start->Control Panel->Administration Tools->Event viewer to identify errors at startup;

P.S. There is also another way to go around this, you should check you BIOS settings to see if your computer hasn't reverted to default settings. If this is the case, than you computer can perform at a very low performance level (but this you should identify by seeing degraded overall performance, not only long startup times). If you don't know what you are doing, don't mess around with BIOS settings.
If this doesn't help, contact someone who can give you hand-on advice.

All the best.

Answer 5

Ooh boy. Well, first up, download an optimizing program like Ashampoo WinOptimizer and run it. It will help you tidy up the system, remove unwanted programs from the registry etc. You could also download and run AdAware SE which will clear your system of spyware. If you are keen to tryit, and if your system was working fine say a week ago or more, you can go through your start-menu, Programs, Accessories, Syetem tools then run the Syetem Restore program. It'll reset your computer to the way it was at a previous point in time (you get to pick).

Answer 6

You have a bunch of adware, viruses and/or junk being loaded on your machine. Go to Add/Remove programs and look for crap that has been downloaded and installed that you did not authorize. Then run anti virus and Ad Aware (free) to get rid of the junk. It'll take some time but stay at it and it'll come back to normal.

Answer 7

here are some helpful tips (will apply to xp pro)
http://www.annoyances.org/exec/forum/winxp/n1041630673

help with start up services:
http://www.jasonn.com/turning_off_unnecessary_services_on_windows_xp/

help with start up programmes:
http://www.sysinfo.org/startuplist.php

a good free startup manager with searchable database
http://www.windowsstartup.com/startupinspector.php

usually not free but free for today only - absolute startup manager:
http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/

includes options to tweak startup procedures

check for spyware, especially boot viruses: use a good tool like spysweeper; or use a free tool like spyware terminator or superantispyware:
http://www.spywareterminator.com/
http://www.snapfiles.com/reviews/Super-Anti-Spyware/SuperAntiSpyware.html

defrag using windows own tool; or a free one like auslogics disk defrag
http://www.auslogics.com/disk-defrag/index.php
or iobit
http://www.iobit.com/SmartDefrag/index.html

or use one of the best(30 day unrestricted evaluation) - perfectdisk
http://www.raxco.com/products/perfectdisk2k/

clean the junk from your system with ccleaner (free)
http://www.ccleaner.com

check options for temp files and old prefetch data

check for potential conflicts:
1. are you running more than one antivirus programme?
2. have you scheduled boot time scans?
3. have you got a third party firewall and windows firewall turned on at the same time?

finally consider whether your hard disk is failing!

Answer 8

Have you tried modifying the BIOS setting for a quick start up ??
Restart the computer & while before the meter bar is going hit the F2 or hold the delete button to enter the BIOS. Depending on your system, it is either one or the other. Then it is using in the advanced settings (I believe), set it for quick start up.

Answer 9

Always start with a topic ou know the other person is interested in and knows a lot about. This way you start off and the other person to your surprise will take over the conversation.

Answer 10

You have a bad driver, I suspect. The problem is, if you don't have a lot of computer knowledge, the solution is difficult. Try taking it to a computer repair shop.