comp startup is getting longer

[TwistedMike]

i have recently reinstalled windows xp updated with all SP's and its has been about a month and the startup is taking about 3mins compared to 30 secs any suggestions? any help would be appreciated and i have done virus and spyware scans just to inform you.

[129260]

msconfig-click start-run. Type msconfig and click ok. go to the startup tab and check for any programs there that you do not want to start with your system. You could also use spybot in advanced mode, and check the startup list. (spybot is a safer way versus msconfig for a average user.)

Also, make sure you check your hard drive using disk defrag. You can find that by going into my computer-right click the drive, properties, tools-under disk defrag click check now. Then click analyze on the window that pops up. It will let you know if a defrag is needed.

Some other things to check, would be going into safe mode and seeing how long it takes to load that. Try then by disabling some programs on startup and see if windows starts any faster.

If you need any more instructions, or have any more questions; feel free to ask.
Hope that helps

[drragostea]

One possible problem is the startup entries (a lot of them) like stated by 129260, or... it could be the accumulation of temp. files and that such. Give ATF Cleaner by Atribune a run. (This is just a brief tip, not much researching yet.)

Safe surfing.

[TwistedMike]

ok thanks for the help guys ill give them both a try and i will tell you the results.

[TwistedMike]

here is a list made by spybot can you pleases take a look at it and give some feedback.

[drragostea]

'ctfmon.exe' you do not need unless you are using an International Language on your machine. Same goes for Java because there won't be another update in a while. Disabling them might not make a noticeable difference in performance means but I disable them to keep my Startup Manager organized.

The only optional ones (you can leave it or disable it based on your preferences) are Google Updater and the HP Software Update. Just my opinion, but it is up to you to decide what should remain and what should/could go.

I'm sure you heard about stories about torrents and P2P? Just be careful.

[129260]

I went to reply.........and realized my bud drragostea said everything i was going to say ha. Anyways, one thing i can provide is why you should not use p2p programs (torrents).

See here: http://forums.spybot.info/showthread.php?t=282

[TwistedMike]

Ok guys thanks for the info and i already know about what risk i am taking when using torrents.

[Norm@Home]

Hi Mike:

This is a difficult question to answer, if I understand you correctly after you reinstalled Windows and updated it with all available service packs your system took 30 seconds to start and now after a month it's taking more than three minutes?

If your system scans clean with SpyBot and whatever Anti-Virus you use it's always possible that maybe you have some type of Root Kit virus that these can't detect. In the last three months I've run across four computers with that type of thing where my anti-virus of choice (NOD32) and SpyBot 1.6.0 couldn't detect the problem and only running ComboFix fix (which I read about in a thread here) fixed the problem.

If that fails to find any problem I would then check your System Event Log to see if you see any problems there i.e. services that fail or are slow to start up, any warnings regarding your hard drive.

After that I would use whatever hard drive diagnostic software is appropriate to your hard drive to check the SMART status to see if you're possibly starting to have a hardware failure. Possibly a bad sector or something with the drive. I mainly use Western Digital and Seagate hard drives and both companies have their own diagnostic software to read the SMART status and test the drive. If the diagnostics don't turn up anything you can always try and have Windows check and repair problems on the drive and do a more extensive "Scan for and attempt to recover bad sectors".

Next you could try and download PageDefrag:

SysInternals PageDefrag

by Mark Russinovich, this handy little utility will defragment your page file as well as a bunch of other system files. When you set it to run on boot up it will tell you how many fragments the various files are currently in.

Hope this helps,

- Norm

[TwistedMike]

yes that is what i am thinking i will try combofix and report back here.