Start up is a little slower

[cc1]

Hi folks. I'd like to pick your brains.

 

Over these past 5 1/2 years years my computer has been fairly consistent taking about 50 seconds to fully boot from a cold start. That includes the time it takes for me to log in with my password at the Welcome screen. Then about three weeks ago it started taking another 20 seconds longer. Now I know in the grand scheme of things, this difference in boot up time is no big deal. And sometime this year I plan on getting a new pc. But I'm obsessive enough to be curious why the sudden change after all these years.

 

The additional 20 seconds seems to occur very early in the boot process. The first image to appear states "ThinkCentre is starting. To interrupt normal process, press Enter". Throughout these years, that screen would show for only a second or so as the boot sequence continued. But now, that screen stays on for about 20 seconds, which seems to account for the overall boot up delay.

 

I've tried the following: Run a check disk, verified (via CCleaner) that my startup programs are still the same (only 4 of them), run PC Doctor (came pre-installed), and verified my bios is updated. Per this post, I had a hardware problem that was resolved. But this boot problem started occurring before I had that hardware issue, so I don't think they're connected.

 

No new software has been installed recently. However, there were some software updates that occurred around that time, including an update to Sandboxie, Nod32, and some Windows updates. But updates like those occur on a fairly frequent basis and they've never caused problems in the past.

 

I'm not as technically skilled as some others are on this forum. But if you have some fairly basic or simple suggestions for me to try to troubleshoot, I'm all for that.

 

(Mods - I'm not sure that this is a software issue, but opted to make this post in this part of the forum. Feel free to move it if you believe it belongs elsewhere.)

 

Thanks

 

* Lenovo A51 8122-55U

[Alan_B]

Rule 1. Windows Updates always do me more harm than good.

 

My other relevant experience is NOD32.

When I used that I had big variable delays before I could use the P.C., depending upon whether a large signature update needed downloading.

 

At that time I found that NOD32 started one process when it had completed booting and sat waiting for me to logg into Windows,

and much earlier NOD32 service was also launched before other things woke up.

I obtained advice from ESET Tech Support and was able to safely delay their startup, and thus get a fast start-up.

[Andavari]

It would help if you listed as much as possible that automatically starts with Windows when you boot, such as:

* Running programs

* Running services

[cc1]

Rule 1. Windows Updates always do me more harm than good.

Do you install WU's? Any particular method that mitigates problems?

 

My other relevant experience is NOD32.

I had been running an older version 3 for about a year. When the boot-up slowness developed a few weeks ago, one of the things I did to try to figure out why was to download (but not install) a newer version of Nod32 and then completely uninstall the current version. I was careful to follow Eset's removal instructions, which included manually deleting some leftover files. Before I installed the newer version, and with no AV on my system, I tried booting to see if it was quicker. It was not. So I think that might rule out Nod32 as the cause of the slowdown.

 

It would help if you listed as much as possible that automatically starts with Windows when you boot, such as:

* Running programs

* Running services

Not a problem. I'm at work, but can do this tonight.

[Alan_B]

Do you install WU's? Any particular method that mitigates problems?

Rule 2. Hold off any updates for a few weeks and see what disasters are caused by which updates.

Rule 3. Assume the worse and create and validate a Partition Image before letting disaster strike.

[cc1]

Rule 2. Hold off any updates for a few weeks and see what disasters are caused by which updates.

Rule 3. Assume the worse and create and validate a Partition Image before letting disaster strike.

Thanks Alan. Looks like I'm doing those (although I don't have any experience recovering any of the images I've made).

 

It would help if you listed as much as possible that automatically starts with Windows when you boot, such as:

* Running programs

* Running services

Using msconfig and services.msc, I've attached pics of the programs running at Startup and listed in Services.

[rridgely]

Holding off on windows updates is a bad idea in my opinion. At the very least make sure you install ALL security updates.

Don't want to update windows media player or something, then fine, but update IE and every other part of windows (and office) that microsoft marks critical.

 

I don't use xp anymore, but I do remember thinking my laptop took longer to boot(a few seconds maybe) after SP3. I didn't care though, the security updates were worth it.

[Alan_B]

Disclaimer I should have stated :-

 

My 3 rules are good for me in my situation which is :-

High trust in Comodo Internet Security which has never let me down ;

Perfect trust in multiple copies of Macrium Partition Image backups held on my Secondary drive for convenience, and duplicated on two external HDD's.

No torrents, peer-to-peer, file-sharing, cracks, etc.

[kroozer]

Perfect trust in multiple copies of Macrium Partition Image backups . . .

 

Hope I never have to restore a Macrium backup. During a trial run, was required to insert the Linux Rescue CD.

Reflect had the partition sizes correct, but the drive letters confused -- wanted to restore the OS to the Recovery partition (D:). Would have trashed Windows Recovery, so I aborted. Too scary to continue.

[Alan_B]

Hope I never have to restore a Macrium backup. During a trial run, was required to insert the Linux Rescue CD.

Reflect had the partition sizes correct, but the drive letters confused -- wanted to restore the OS to the Recovery partition (D:). Would have trashed Windows Recovery, so I aborted. Too scary to continue.

That is a problem with all Linux systems - Linux does not seem to use drive letters.

That is a problem with all WINDOWS systems - Drive letters are not part of any drive identification "like wot labels be"

 

The identity is mostly within the registry.

There is no registry for a Boot CD to examine if it is restoring a totally trashed partition,

and even if the registry happened to be accessible I would not trust the quality of its data if I had cause to restore both the registry and all else in that partition.

 

THE SOLUTION regardless of whether the Boot CD is Linux or Windows or some FREEDOS variant :-

Identify the partition in its label. e.g.

 

C_System_C

D_Data___D

E_GPT_E

T_GPT_T

System Reserved

 

The first four labels are on :-

partitions (C:) and (D:) of my primary MBR HDD ; and

partitions (E:) and (T:) of my secondary GPT HDD.

 

"System Reserved" is the default name of the Windows 7 Boot Partition

and I will always recognize it by its size of only 100 MB, as well as its label.

 

My Laptop was UN-bootable when it lost ALL its partitions.

Due to Macrium I did not panic.

 

The Partition Wizard Boot Recovery CD included a Partition Recovery Wizard.

That found all the boundaries of the lost partitions,

plus all the boundaries of those earlier partitions before I shrunk, expanded, and shifted them.

It perfectly identified all the labels for each partition, but of course no drive letters.

Regrettably I had never assigned meaningful and unique labels - I never knew they would be useful.

 

N.B. I first used this instead of Macrium because I chose to test the performance of the partition Wizard "life-belt"

knowing that I was safe because the Macrium "life-boat" was on stand-by, only one CD away.

I thought that it would be useful to know if I could recommend the use of this tool for some-one who had no partition backup.

Also I had no backup of my downloads partition and I preferred to avoid downloading everything a second time.

 

The Recovery Wizard spent perhaps half an hour to scan the drive and identify the position of each boundary.

It took me twice as long choosing which boundaries might have been serving what purpose.

 

One more boot failure but I correctly guessed a corrupt MBR and the Recovery Wizard fixed that in less than 1 minute.

 

The first thing after that was to apply unique identification that included my chosen letter for each label.

 

I use the Professional Macrium with Win PE recovery Boot CD.

That Boot CD allocates "appropriate" letters to the partitions that it will restore to.

I believe it uses the "defaults" that Windows would apply as based upon position.

The Boot CD does NOT predict the correct letters because I chose something other than default,

BUT it does give me the correct labels, and after restoration my chosen letters are pulled out of the registry and applied.

I think you may be as guilty as I by choosing non-defaults for your drive letters,

but so long as you correctly identify the partition for restoration

(by position and or size and or label)

then you will get a good restoration and your system should apply the correct letters out of the registry.

 

From your use of Macrium Linux I deduce an old free version.

Linux does not allow the addition of extra drivers,

i.e. if you have a special flavor or hardware (e.g. perhaps USB3 or later)

it will possibly not be part of standard Linux and therefore it may fail to see an image file via a USB3 port.

Win PE has greater flexibility and starts with a wider range of drivers than Linux,

and can additionally incorporate drivers that are part of your Windows System.

 

I think you can now get Free Macrium with Win PE capability.

Because it is free Macrium cannot afford to pay Microsoft the license fee for Macrium specific variant,

BUT they include the capability to extract the variant from a 2 GB W.A.I.K. download that Microsoft provide for free.

 

Please note that an alternative to the 2 GB download which I intend to evaluate is only 6.4 MB.

It is EASYPE-31x64.ZIP

You can get it from post #183 on what I see as page 19 at

http://www.sevenforu...macrium-19.html

I believe there is also a x86 version.

These tools do NOT work on XP.

I cannot remember Vista

They do work on Windows 7 because these tools know how to get from Windows 7 the bits that Macrium needs.

These tools can give you a Boot CD with menu to choose Partition Wizard or Macrium PE Restore or Easeus Restore,

and many other things that outnumber my remaining and functioning grey cells

 

First I have to learn how to make a Flash Drive accept and boot with an ISO.

Then I can start going crazy with that tool and not waste a land-fill site with Coaster CD's.

I already have the BIOS configured and waiting to go.

[nodles]

You probably have cleaned the PC with CCleaner after the slowdown? Have you ran defrag on your drive?

You also could update drivers on your PC.

If you don't need Sandboxie as automatic/startup you could set it to Manual.

Do you use Themes? You can disable or set to Manual if not. If you use (big) hosts-file, you should set DNS as Disabled or Manual (if you don't use homegroup or domain). I've set Automatic Updates to Manual and I check them myself manually. If you don't have printer installed/used on this PC, you can set Print Spooler to Manual or Disabled. I've Security Center Disabled, so if you don't need that you can disable that aswell (don't if you use Windows Firewall).

Same goes with System Restore Service, if you don't need/want it, you can set it to Manual.

 

You should scan for virus/malware also.

[Super Fast]

First I have to learn how to make a Flash Drive accept and boot with an ISO.

Then I can start going crazy with that tool and not waste a land-fill site with Coaster CD's.

I already have the BIOS configured and waiting to go.

Alan, you can use Microsoft's USB DVD tool.

 

They have other utilities out there, but this works well enough for making a bootable flash drive from your 7 DVD.

It is a simple 3 or 4 click process.

 

Peace!

[Super Fast]

Holding off on windows updates is a bad idea in my opinion. At the very least make sure you install ALL security updates.

Don't want to update windows media player or something, then fine, but update IE and every other part of windows (and office) that microsoft marks critical.

 

I don't use xp anymore, but I do remember thinking my laptop took longer to boot(a few seconds maybe) after SP3. I didn't care though, the security updates were worth it.

 

Depends...

 

I have seen updates that fix things, but I have also seen updates that bluescreen a machine & cause it to crash. As well as slow down to nearly unusable. Let us not forget when SP3 for XP first came out, the horrors of businesses when hundreds of machines were bluescreened if they happened to be using an AMD processor.

 

No, it is always still a good idea to have a backup if you are applying updates, because they can & do randomly crash machines. Backup, backup, backup!

 

Of course, I also noted that many of the most devastating attacks are from the inside, & that even the most patched 32 or 64 bit XP/Vista/7 with antivirus/firewall/etc. machine still breaks if users install certain, ah, rogue softwares! Whether the rootkits come from innoculous sounding names such as the video active-x plugin that isn't really a plugin to view videos, or rogue toolbars & baddies that masqueraude as legit antivirus apps.

 

The truth is, there are still rootkits & baddies out there that can bring a machine to it's knees. Never, never, never, never allow people to just install whatever they want, because many people still do not know much about computers, & it is that group of people that will unknowingly bring your machines to a grinding halt.

[Super Fast]

Over these past 5 1/2 years years my computer has been fairly consistent taking about 50 seconds to fully boot from a cold start. That includes the time it takes for me to log in with my password at the Welcome screen. Then about three weeks ago it started taking another 20 seconds longer. Now I know in the grand scheme of things, this difference in boot up time is no big deal. And sometime this year I plan on getting a new pc. But I'm obsessive enough to be curious why the sudden change after all these years.

 

The additional 20 seconds seems to occur very early in the boot process. The first image to appear states "ThinkCentre is starting. To interrupt normal process, press Enter". Throughout these years, that screen would show for only a second or so as the boot sequence continued. But now, that screen stays on for about 20 seconds, which seems to account for the overall boot up delay.

 

After ensuring that you have a total backup you can recover from, here are a few things to try:

 

- Use System Restore to revert to a point prior to this wherein you know it was working properly (5 wks ago, perhaps?).

 

- After the restore, if you don't need the restore points, cycle System Restore off, then back on to clear the GB of space it uses.

 

- Using Auto-Runs, check your scheduled tasks/boot execute/logon/etc to find dead entries, or entries that should not exist.

 

- Check your drive free space & if it is low, ensure you copy your music/pics/large files to a flash or external disk.

 

- Scan your drive with SuperAntispyware portable to ensure it is malware free.

 

- Update to the latest CCleaner & disable unnecessary startup + Internet Explorer startup (BHO).

 

- Run CCleaner registry cleaner, being sure to uncheck Unused file extensions first, then let it make a backup of things removed.

 

- Run CCleaner (the trash cleaner part).

 

- Run CCleaner drive wiper & choose the wipe free space function for the current drive. Single pass. It helps clean MFT as well, & it has been known to help somewhat.

 

- Defrag your drive. A complete defrag.

 

- Power your PC off & blow the dust from the processor/case/graphics fans to eliminate heat buildup. Heat causes slowdowns, & sometimes a total shutdown if it gets too hot. Use a q-tip to stop the fan blades while blowing, so they don't over-rpm.

 

* Alas, if you have updates turned on, there is no way around that part. It may take a year, or a couple years, but eventually, some update is gonna slow your machine down. It might be a Service Pack, a "bug" fix, some new HTML engine support, whatever...

 

Check your last updates in the Add/Remove programs (not the CCleaner add remove) & click "View installed updates". You may be able to spot something there.

 

It is difficult to say just what caused the slowdown without being right there in front of the machine, but hopefully, one of the above can help solve your dilemna. Sometimes programs or malware scheduled themselves in your running tasks folder, so if you use a lot of Google products, or Apple iTunes, you will find that you are empowered with an updater for Google Toolbar, Google Chrome, Google Earth, Apple iTunes, Apple Bonjour, etc, etc, etc.

 

You really have to watch Google + Apple. They will install a ton of updater services that can slow your machine to a crawl. Not to mention the services that Apple installs with iTunes.

 

Check if you installed iTunes or any other app that installs services like it. They cause a machine to slow down as bad or worse than other startup items.

[Super Fast]

Hope I never have to restore a Macrium backup. During a trial run, was required to insert the Linux Rescue CD.

Reflect had the partition sizes correct, but the drive letters confused -- wanted to restore the OS to the Recovery partition (D:). Would have trashed Windows Recovery, so I aborted. Too scary to continue.

 

It has been my experience that, during a full system scan, a number of leading antivirus programs will automatically see the "autoruns" entry of the recovery partition & delete the autoruns portion in effort to protect the PC from autorun style viruses. Nearly every recovery partition comes with an auto-run style entry for the partition it is on.

 

This trashes/kills the recovery partition, because it can't recover without the loader.

 

Therefore, I always delete the recovery partition, since A/V solutions usually render it a paper rock (so to speak) anway. And merge it into the existing partition. Thus, I have more usable space, & recovery with another program is no problem.

[Alan_B]

Alan, you can use Microsoft's USB DVD tool.

 

They have other utilities out there, but this works well enough for making a bootable flash drive from your 7 DVD.

It is a simple 3 or 4 click process.

 

Peace!

Thanks, now downloaded. Will get started on it tomorrow.

[cc1]

Well, I've spend the past 3 days spinning my wheels and getting nowhere. Kinda frustrating. I've tried it all:

1. AV and antispyware scanning (Nod32 + Malwarebytes). System is clean.
   
2. Tried System Restore. It used to work, but no longer. Also tried it in safe mode. I keep getting a message stating the restore failed and to try another restore point.
   
3. Defragging my drive (I do it each week).
   
4. Registry cleaning (CCleaner's). (Yes, I backup the deleted files.)
   
5. Updating the drivers.
   
6. Etc. Etc.
   

I'm starting to think the startup pause issue may be hardware related. My screen randomly blanks out. Once every few hours. No bsod. It just goes blank. Sometimes my system dies with it. Sometimes I still have sound. But my only option then is to do a hard shut down. (This happened once during a System Restore and I'm wondering if something got corrupted and that's why SR fails now. I read that a cure may be to delete all my restore points and start over with them, so that's what I did. We'll see. )

 

I think my system came with integrated video as well as a separate, dedicated video adapter card. There are two ports on the back, one pertains to the dedicated card, which is the one my monitor uses. The other port (I guess) pertains to the integrated video. I thought a good test would be to plug my monitor into that one and use it for a while. But I tried that this morning and I never got any image to appear. So, I don't know what to make of that.

 

Your thoughts about this being the video card?

[hazelnut]

Look in the Windows Event Viewer under the system and applications sections to see if any error messages show.

[cc1]

Look in the Windows Event Viewer under the system and applications sections to see if any error messages show.

 

Had another freeze up a few minutes ago that required a hard shut down and reboot. There's an error message in Event Viewer > System. The "Source" is ati2mag. The description says "CRT invalid display type".

[nodles]

Have you updated your grapghics card drivers & DirectX?

What about BIOS? System temperature?

Check this: http://www.hardwareh...splay-type.html

[cc1]

Have you updated your grapghics card drivers & DirectX?

What about BIOS? System temperature?

Check this: http://www.hardwareh...splay-type.html

 

Thanks nodles. I wasn't aware of hardwareheaven. Looks like a good site and I'll be bookmarking that one.

 

Otherwise, I've done everything I'm skilled enough to do, shy of using Clonezilla to restore an image of my system taken a few weeks before these symtpoms started. I've cleaned the inside of my computer, ran multiple scans, updated all drivers and directx, flashed the bios, uninstalled apps, reinstalled apps, ran check disk, etc. Still, my pc continues to pause a while during startup, and the screen occasionally / randomly blanks out and my system freezes up.

 

One thing I discovered is I can induce my screen blanking out and the associated system freeze up by running this game. Everytime I try to play it, my screen blanks out a minute or so into the game and the system freezes up. Otherwise, the blank out and freezing happens randomly (maybe once an hour), even if I'm just looking at something as benign as a Word document. Event Viewer doesn't seem to be much help.

 

Can this be symptomatic of a hardware problem?

[nodles]

Might be graphics card problem, you could try to test it (stress test) with FurMark http://www.ozone3d.n...enchmarks/fur/.

You might also want to test your HDD with manufacturer's tools or http://www.hdtune.com/ or with some bootable (Hiren's/UBCD maybe).

 

Tools for testing RAM: http://www.memtest.org/ or http://www.memtest86.com/ (both are bootable).

Edited January 20, 2012 by nodles

[login123]

Holding off on windows updates is a bad idea in my opinion. At the very least make sure you install ALL security updates.

Don't want to update windows media player or something, then fine, but update IE and every other part of windows (and office) that microsoft marks critical.

 

I don't use xp anymore, but I do remember thinking my laptop took longer to boot(a few seconds maybe) after SP3. I didn't care though, the security updates were worth it.

 

My best wild guess is hardware, also. But, fwiw, I reinstalled win xp a few months ago. Took forever, and I could see it slow down considerably after some of the restarts, especially the net framework stuff. Still, ya gotta install the security updates.

[cc1]

Might be graphics card problem, you could try to test it (stress test) with FurMark http://www.ozone3d.n...enchmarks/fur/.

You might also want to test your HDD with manufacturer's tools or http://www.hdtune.com/ or with some bootable (Hiren's/UBCD maybe).

 

Tools for testing RAM: http://www.memtest.org/ or http://www.memtest86.com/ (both are bootable).

 

Thanks. I might have time tonight to check these out.

 

My best wild guess is hardware, also. But, fwiw, I reinstalled win xp a few months ago. Took forever, and I could see it slow down considerably after some of the restarts, especially the net framework stuff. Still, ya gotta install the security updates.

Hmmm.... A few weeks ago I installed that .net framework 3.0 or 3.5 thing. I held off doing it for a long time because it was monstrous in size, but finally caved in. Truth is, I can't recall if I installed it because I noticed the slow booting - freeze up issue and thought it might help...or if those problems began after the install.

 

Troubleshooting these types of issues ain't easy.

[Super Fast]

Just out of interest, how much RAM do you have?

 

If you have less than 1 GB RAM in XP, expect it to run slow. Especially if you have an antivirus, startup items, use a web browser, etc.

You can get bye with 512 MB, but barely. That's if you have no A/V, don't open more than 5 tabs or so browsing the web, & don't have shared graphics.

__________

 

Also, have you tried pulling out all card you don't use? For instance, I took out the dialup card from my machine years ago.

Then I went into the BIOS to disable Floppy drive. If that doesn't work, you can disable it with Device Manager from within Windows.

__________

 

If you have it set to boot from USB media, it will slow down as well if anything other than your Harddisk is listed as the first place to look.

You might want to be sure you have network booting at the bottom. That's a REAL pain & adds sometimes 20 seconds or so to startup.

Don't leave CD/DVD media in the drive on startup, either!

 

__________

 

P.S. Have you tried turning system restore off, then on again & doing a complete system defrag after you CClean & remove music/documents/etc. to a flash drive? I do wonder how much free space you have...