Incredibly slow boot

I usually let this computer sink into hard drive stopping standby, but today I shut down and booted. It took 15 minutes from the first beeps to get to the end of hard drive churning noise and normal usability on the desktop. Why is this computer taking so long to boot?

P4 2.66GHz Non-HT
512MB of DDR PC2700 Memory
120GB 5400RPM Hard Drive (Max DMA enabled in Windows)
Nvidia Geforce4 MX 440

I allow Norton Protection Center, Norton Auto-Protect, Sygate Firewall, Volume and Safely Remove Hardware to appear in the tray at startup. I use a ~3Mb photo as a background, there's a folder with 5GB of contents on the desktop. I scan with Norton, Spybot S&D, Ad-Aware every 2 weeks or so.

 

Slow Startup

1) You might want to check you boot sequence in your bios although that did not seem to be a previous issue . You can set it to boot from the hard drive as the first choice to speed things up

2) Your main issue is probably the list of items that are on your startup sequence.
You have to manually go through the list one by one

start > run > msconfig


you can google the program , or try "xxx" spyware to see if anyone has reported it as spyware or the process non essential. If you are not sure then leave it is.
At the worst you can go into safe mode and set it again for on

You can either use the start > run > msconfig or a utility like

http://www.download.com/Startup-Inspector-for-Windows/3000-2086_4-10452094.html?tag=lst-0-4

 

Your problem must definetley be whats on your desktop.... I put a picture up for my desktop wallpaper that was just under 3mb... then loaded exactly 5 gigs of files into a folder on my my desktop and then shutdown and restarted... It took just over 13 minutes to load from the time I started the system until it finally got to the desktop. The system I did this on was almost identical to yours for the exception of the hd and anti-virus

P4 2.66GHz Non-HT
512MB of DDR PC2700 Memory
300GB 7200RPM Hard Drive
Nvidia Geforce4 MX 440

and PC-Cillin Internet Security 2007... the rest was the same...

I make the desktop picture smaller and put the 5 gigs of files on cd or dvd...

You will see the difference...

 

You can also download and check with Autoruns: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/SystemInformation/Autoruns.mspx
The page also gives you basic instructions on how to use it. It is no burden on your computer being a tiny .zip file. This will show you exactly what is loading up and what exactly is in the Boot. You can disable any entries by removing the check from the box.

Regards - Rista

 

The folders containing 5GB of stuff are seperate folders for each person. We put them on the desktop because they were easy to access. I've moved them to C:\ and created shortcuts on the desktop. I hope this cuts down on boot times.

I scanned again for junk/ viruses and found 2 "tracking cookies" which I deleted.

I changed the desktop image from a 4.85MB one to a 1.35MB one. I don't know if this will improve boot times much. All the photos I use on my desktop of 1280 x 1024 are personal photos at 2272 x 1704.

Shutting down and booting....hope this doesn't take 20+ minutes.

 

Slow Boot

Hi Dave have you done any hardware diagnosis. I initially would suspect hard drive errors. Look in the system errors to see if anything is being logged. Have you checked the PC for disk space. 3MB is not large for a background photo but it will slow your system down. What is the desktop folder with 5Gb in it? Hear from you soon.