Resolved Still having slow start-up problems

DW's Asus netbook is taking an average 16 minutes to boot up. I posted some time ago and, as suggested, ran the boot log. It ran to 66 pages! it's still a PITA.

During a boot, the cursor arrow flashes at about 1.5 HZ. The netbook gets to its resident stuff quite quickly. It's the network things that are hanging. Not all of the desktop icons show up, just those to do with resident programs.

In frustration, the other day, I brought up the manager pane with CTRL>ALT>DELETE and looked at Applications. Each time the cursor flashed, another instance of "svchost" popped up in the program listings. After a couple of minutes, there were 10 instances of this program, all with different memory usage numbers. With nothing better to do, I started deleting those with small memory allocations and suddenly, the box came to life, a good 8 minutes before it would have if I'd just let it run. I know "svchost" is a Windows program, but can anyone xplain why it keeps re-starting itself?

We currently don't have a registry cleaner, after our subscription to Registry Mechanic expired. There have been so many negative comments about registry cleaners in general, I didn't bother renewing the subscription. However, when we had RM and used it about once a month, we didn't experience hang-ups like we do now.

My desk-top has an occasional hang-up where none of the icons show up after 15 minutes, so I re-boot and it's usually OK.

Comments?

 

Svchost.Exe can be thought of as a ratcheting socket wrench, what it does depends on what you attach (command line parameters) to it. If you want to track down exactly what is going on during bootup, I suggest Autoruns. It is very comprehensive.

 

You need to cut down on the programs & the services that autorun. These can be a huge drain on the performance & 90% of these are not required.

In addition to Autoruns already suggested above, I also suggest that you download & run CCleaner & PC Decrapifier.

If many instances of svchost are running, it could be a sign of malware.

 

I am only theorising, but if I offered a "registry cleaning" program, how would I ensure that users didn't stop subscribing to it? I would ensure that it appeared to be continually needed.

If my system appeared to have a bad registry, it would not take me very much time to consider backing up and reformatting.

Some programs are badly written and even though you uninstall them, they may have made changes that cannot be (easily) repaired. For example, they may have changed the version of files and not replaced them with the original version. Some programs offer a "complete uninstaller ", one company (I won't mention the name) had one for download at their website, the last time I checked it was gone, but they had the "complete uninstaller" on their software installation CD. ...Seems crazy to me!

It is not just malware that can break your system (make it sick). There are many well-known programs I would actively avoid installing on a computer. For example, Symantec seems to be trying to rebuild it's reputation, but I would still think twice before running it, although they are getting excellent reviews now. There are "free" programs that use forms of spyware. Sony are the inventors of the rootkit (correct me if I am wrong).

Just a quick thought, try right-clicking on the svchost and use the "go to service "(?) to try and track what is running, then shut it down and watch the system performance.

As I said, if I offered a registry cleaner program, it would be productive to make the program indispensable.

Me, I would reformat with little hesitation.

Matt

 

Thanks, Arie. If I can get DW off her computer for a while, I'll try procexp.

 

I can't get any further with this issue at present, so I'll mark it "Resolved" then resurrect it after I've tried the suggested remedies, if necessary.