Crazy Long Start Up Time
 

I have a 5 yr old Dell desktop that, as a whole, functions well. What's crazy are the boot/startup times. It takes on average 4 1/2 minutes between selecting a user and having a fully functional desktop. Most of that time is on a black screen.

I've run virus/malware/spyware scans. I've defragged and run disk cleaners and everything seems to be in good working order(considering the age of the machine). I have noticed that when you restart the machine it always wants to do a disk check.

I have recently replaced the power supply, and we do have some bulky games on this machine. Maybe 4 games combining for about 15-16 GB in size.

IS there anything I can do to get this thing to come to life more quickly?

go to your RUN line in your start menu. Type in 'msconfig' when msconfig opens, tab over to startup. Uncheck everything you don't need. Then, go to the services tab and check 'hide all Microsoft services' look through the services and uncheck anything you don't need. If you aren't certain with services, leave them checked.

Boot again. See how that helps.

edit; if you feel adventurous you can go the boot options section in MSCONFIG and check the NO GUI BOOT - this will skip the windows GUI when you boot, saving you precious resources~

Do you have any external USB storage devices plugged in? I've had really weird problems with Dells from that era suddenly getting confused at boot time.

Thanks, while its not night and day, I seem to see some improvement

Make sure you remove any programs you don't need via the control panel, the more data on your drive, the longer the disk head has to search.

There are some things you can do in the BIOS as well that would likely help as much or more, but its a little advanced, if you want, you can find out the exact model of computer and I can TRY to walk you through the bios changes.

If you want to just LOOK at the bios and see how you feel, hold (usually) f2 on startup and it will take you to the bios screen, you can do things like change the first boot device to HDD, turn off a lot of system checks at the beginning of boot time, possibly have a fast boot option. Hard to say without knowing what BIOS you have.

Also, on top of a defrag, run your disk cleanup tool as well. It will clear out a lot of temp files and other trash files.

If your on vista, get yourself a thumb drive and try using readyboost as well. It won't always help depending on your configuration but its worth a try.

http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=2160

have you ever reloaded windows? I personally do it every 6-9 months just because you inevitably have some corruption within the system files. If that doesn't appeal to you then you could run setup and do a windows repair instead. I'd still advise backing up your system before you did that though.

I also like this program which cleans your registry and will also clean startup items. I've used it for a while now and it is a nice small program that does a good job preventing things you don't want from installing.

http://www.yac.mx

Dude, it's 5 years old. Just rebuild it. If it's still slow, buy a new one.

Put in a solid state hard drive. You'll thank me later.

This is wrong.

You do not 'inevitably have corruption in system files' - The only time 'system files' would be 'corrupted' (im not even sure what this means) is if you did something to cause it. Not to mention, if you truly had system file problems, they would show up as much more than slow startup.

Now, sometimes you can get some redundant registry entries and the like, but they aren't going to cause any startup slowing, or really any ill effects at all. And you can take care of anything like that with CCleaner, which you should be using as anyway.

If he wants to spend the money, the SSD will cure all that ails his startup woes.

I was just not too hot on suggesting spending the money on a computer that is already outdated.

Why not? He can use it for his new computer.

Yeah, don't bother with registry cleaners. They don't work and it's much more likely it will cause further problems.

Don't bother with defrag, unless you're still running WinXP. It's not necessary and even in older OSes, it wasn't the magic cure all that it was touted as.

In addition to using msconfig, another more advanced method is using the Services app. Go to the Run command and type services.msc. There you can manage every single service running on the machine. You can change the behavior from Automatic startup to manual, and a bunch of other neat options. Don't turn things off that you don't know though. If in doubt, look up the service online to see what it is and what it does.

Also, as phisherman said, you might consider a rebuild. It's not that difficult and you'd be amazed at how much better the machine would run afterward. Once you do that once, you'll start to understand how to manage the OS to make a rebuild relatively painless.

No, it's not wrong. You uninstall and reinstall programs which changes and resets files. Some will remove a file you might need etc. So unless you're a grandma who just runs a computer as is and never connects to the internet, you will inevitably need to reload at some point. Ask any tech who's worth a shit and they'll tell you the same.

Who uninstalls and reinstalls programs on a regular basis? Why would anyone need wipe their drive then reload Windows from a DVD, then download and install hours of updates? That sounds like a major waste of time, especially if you require a shit ton of programs.

If you believe you'll need to reinstall at some point, wipe your drive, install Windows, update it, install your programs, then make a safe Desktop Image using a program like Paragon or similar. Save the image on an external drive and re-image as necessary.

Sorry, but it is wrong. Uninstalling doesn't change or reset files other than what was included with the program. The way the Windows Uninstaller works, is that the registry records every single installed file and its location during the install process. So when you uninstall, it knows exactly what to remove and can remove every file initially installed. In the old days when memory and HD space were limited, you sometimes had programs that would share some files like drivers. That's not the case anymore. But even when it was back in the days of XP, the system noted any shared files, and would ask you before removing a file that was shared. These days an uninstaller will not remove a file you might need. That just doesn't happen.

There are legit reasons for doing a rebuild, but that's not really one of them.