WinXP Slow on Reboot

Ref: Sony VAIO P4, 3.0 GHz, 512 MB RAM, WinXP MCE SP1, HDD C:\36 GB Free.

System is fairly new, and I'm new to WinXP.

Runs great but after a reboot it's pretty slow for a day; Clearing Recent Docs takes up to 30 seconds when normally it's 5 seconds, Word 2003/Excel 2003 take 30-40 seconds to open when they're instantaneous normally.

I've DISABLED Indexing service, and other Services that I think I understand, but that hasn't helped.

Defragged both C and D partitions without improvement.

Any ideas?

Thanks,
Larry

 

If I'm understanding what you wrote, after being up for a day, the system runs faster than right after a reboot? Same behavior with warm boot vs. power down for a few minutes and start back up?

The only thing that comes to mind for the 'slow when booted then faster later' is if you use a 3rd party defrag app that puts things in an order that XP dislikes. XP will begin rearranging things in the background so maybe it just takes a day to get things back like it wants them. Otherwise I'm pretty well clueless on this.

First thing to try is start~run~sfc /scannow.

Some generic 'speed up' things to try that will help some, may help a lot. And I'm feeling lazy so not posting links but google has them all.

Check out Blackviper and the suggestions for things you don't need running.

Ad-aware & Spybot with updates after installed and then let them do trash removal.

If all the above fails to help you at all, might be worth installing Hijackthis and getting it to produce a log then posting that here.

 

Yep, you've got it. Noticeably Faster!

I Used WinXP Defrag. No after-market stuff.

I am running Norton Internet Security/Antivirus 2003 including Norton Firewall as well as WinXP Firewall.

That a problem?

When new I ran Ad-Aware then SpyBot-Search & Destroy and Innoculated the system. Rechecked recently...no spyware or adware.

Nothing unusual (that I can tell) going on in Task Manager.

What is sfc /scannow?....Sys File Checker? Where located?

Thanks for thinking about this!
Best, Larry