EXTREMELY slow login performance

What can I do to "up" my startup/login performance on my home desktop? Once I'm logged in I have no issues, but the start up times are awful. From the time I click my Profile to log in until the time I can open up IE and the homepage completes opening has been timed somewhere in the neighborhood of FIVE MINUTES.

I have been trying to stop/remove items that run on start up that are not necessary, but something is causing major lag time. I'm not saying I need to boot up in ten seconds, because I know I want one or two programs (like Skype) to start up upon login. But maybe I can't have that either.

Suggestions, help, something?

 

From my own years of experience I suggest that you shutdown EVERYTHING that now loads at startup and then put things back one at a time.
I have also found that it may not be now much but what or combination of what is loaded.
Again. I have found that it does not pay to load too much at startup. Sometimes it wastes more time than it saves.

BillyBob

 

Hello Anakalia,

First read this post http://www.windowsbbs.com/showthread.php?t=39425

Your lag time though sounds like something major:

Basic applications such as AV or Firewall, or a "heavy" program such as photo editing you use, or the OS is having trouble loading drivers or a major component. Try disabling each in turn

First, do you get this booting in Safe Mode?

Next: try different msconfig > General tab's Start Up options in Selective startup.

Regards - Charles

 

After viewing the info from the BlackViper page via the link, I shaved off one minute to boot up time, so I must be headed in the right direction.

I have not booted in safe mode yet to see how it run, but I'm going to guess it'll be pretty quick.

Is it possible to see the processes the computer is going through as it boots up? I mean, is there some software out there that can pop up (yeah, how foolish of me to want to add something else during start up) and show me what's going on during the course of the 3:47:58 complete start up?

 

Hi Anakalia,

Read this article analyzing XP boot performance using an old and now discontinued MS boot analysis tool called BootVs http://www.helpwithwindows.com/WindowsXP/tune-19.html

Do not use BootVs to "fix" the boot time, strictly for analysis.

Regards - Charles

 

Okay, I downloaded BootVis and had it run. Now comes the hard part - interpretation. I don't quite understand what it all means.

Here is some info:

The Boot Activity was done at 124.28 seconds
Bootvis.exe process was created at 256.79 seconds
Entire bootvis scan was 266 seconds

CPU usage spikes throughout the entire 266 seconds to 100%

Disk I/O
Disk Read varies between 120-700 IO/sec during the first 20 seconds and the read and write taper off a bit for the remaining time.

Disk Utilization
At around 2 seconds, this peaks to 100% and while there are drops at times, it stays maxed out at 100% throughout the first minute. It drops for the next 30 seconds, and then peaks back to max for the rest of the 266 seconds.

Driver Delay
The only thing that really takes up a lot of time is mfehidk.sys, which after a quick google appears to be a McAfee thing. (Somehow I'm guessing this may be part of the pain in my side.)

If anyone can help interpret this mess, I'd be appreciated. How can I get performance while still using McAfee?

 

Hi Anakalia,

Yeah, I thought it was one of your major apps.

There aren't too many ways to interpert this "mess ", you're going to have to do something about McAfee, either stop using it, try re installing it, live with it, or ask McAfee for help, and if they're true to form, they'll tell you to re install

Regards - Charles