Slow PC Bootup (Windows XP)

Hello,

I'm a big fan of these forums. To start, here are my PC Specs:

I used AIDA32 for this information

I'm running Windows XP Home Edition with Service Pack 2
I have a Pentium 4 1680 mHz processor
I have 512 meg RDRAM
My motherboard is a Dell Optiplex GX400


Thanks to these forums, my PC is spyware free, and I use Nortons Internet Security 2005.

The problem is, my PC takes over 2 minuntes to boot. I have done fresh installs of both Win XP Home and Win XP Pro from legitimate disks onto freshly formatted partitions. The screen with the Win XP logo comes up, but the colored bars move at a crawl.

As far as I know, the PC works great otherwise. I would like to know why my PC takes such an abnormally long time to boot though. It takes between 2 and 3 minutes, as I said. The only programs that start up with Windows are Nortons Internet Security and Microsoft's Anti-Spyware. Both of these programs have been added since the boot problems start though, so they are unrelated.

I'd appreciate any ideas.


Oh yeah, I almost forgot the backstory to the PC. It was on the net and hit very hard during the blaster worm and other maladies that traveled through IE (Firefox all the way now). I needed a PC for school, and being on dial-up and riddled with virii and spyware, I bought a new PC. For one of my classes, I took the PC (which was hit by the worm, the one that currently boots slowly) and turned it into a Linux box. This was awhile back though, I can't remember the details. Is it possible that the linux installation messed up the bios? Do I just need to flash the bios? Can anyone think of anything else to try?

Thanks for your time.

 

What I do is see what is starting up when booting. Msconfig, selective start up and see what is in there. I stop the programs I don't need running when start up...

 

Service pack 2 is a big culprit for slow boot times it's practically doubled the boot time on mine,the reason I havn't removed it is for security and I only turn my pc on 1-2 times a day,so I'm not too bothered.Try this program it can speed up your boot times by reorganizing critical files,but it's best feature is being able to map the boot up showing you in a graph how long parts of the the computer are taking to do thier stuff.

http://majorgeeks.com/download664.html

its only a small file.

 

Thanks for the file Rikky. I'll optimise my drive and then post the results from some boots.

For some further info, the booting does not have anything to do with SP2. The disks that I used to format were both XP Home and Pro with SP1. This problem happens to the PC on a fresh install with no other programs installed. The problem continues after the PC has been innoculated of virii and spyware. I think it's got to be hardware related, although my PC runs great once it's open.

To reiterate, it's not just taking a long time to boot, it's an excessively long time (2-3 min), so much so that my friend's PC is a year older (Dell too, 1.4 gHz with 256 meg RAM, half what I have) and boots in about 20 sec. His PC is loaded with spyware too, go figure.

 

Ok, cool program.

Apparently rthwcls.sys is taking +219 to load.

Off to google that


edit--apparently it's the driver to my Riptide audio card

 

Well I replaced the driver that takes so long, only to have the same problem.

Hope someone can help.

 

Can you remove the driver entirely and reboot? Does that speed you up?

 

disable it in system properties or better yet yank it from the system.it might treat the symtom,but it will show you the cause.

 

Do you have an installed, but unused network card?

Every time Windows starts, it has to allocate an address for every network, so remove or disable any unused cards.

BTW, do yourself a favour and get rid of Bootvis before you end up having to format and reinstall.

 

whats wrong with bootvis insomniac?

 

Bootvis is more for tech support than the end user, and even then isn't that great a program.

A lot of people have had to format and start again because of it, so many that Micr$$oft no longer offers it as a download and removed it from their site.

 

Type

Rundll32.exe advapi32.dll,ProcessIdleTasks

In the run dialog this will make xp optimize boot files,
After that download page defrag from sysinternals and do an offline defrag at bootup
http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/freeware/pagedefrag.shtml

 

Hey kadavill, why don't you supply the link as you have previously proclaimed that it's better?

http://www.tek-tips.com/faqs.cfm?fid=4518

 

Well I deleted rthwcls.sys from the c:\windows\system32\drivers folder, and rebooted.

The file was restored, and the boot took approximately the same amount of time. Bootvis showed that it took from sec 4 to sec 210 to load rthwcls.sys, and the processor is at 100% all that time.

I don't know how the file was restored, possibly from the recycle bin?

 

Try actually uninstalling the device driver by going under the device manager. It may be searching for the file during load and then pulling a replacement from an archive.

Oh... and never randomly delete anything from System 32 unless you are absolutely sure of what you are doing.

 

Hey boy thanks for that.

 

Capt. Caveman, thanks for your advice. The thing is, I'm A+ certified, so I'm really not sure why I'm having these troubles, but I'm not a novice.

I've got a back-up of the driver in a zip folder.

I tried the defrag utility posted, everything was already in 1 cluster, but I ran it anyway. My drive is not fragmented.

I'm going to delete the drivers from my recycle bin and everywhere else they are and try it again. As far as rebuilding the PC, I'm not worried if I screw something up, I really want to fix this boot problem though if it's possible.

The best I can tell, this driver is used in some sort of Modem/Soundcard/Joystick multicard. I'll try what Capt Caveman mentioned. I don't need the modem/joystick part of the card, but I MAY need the soundcard. I'll have to check.

Thanks for everyone's help so far.

Do the same people read all the forums or would a post in the driver forum maybe draw some new people to help?

 

Ok serious WTF moment.

I delete the file from the folder. Watch the folder, the file comes back in 7 seconds. I delete the file from the folder, and quickly empty the recycling bin, the file comes back. I turn off System Restore, and the file still comes back.

I guess I'm off to delete the file and quickly reboot. I disabled the Riptide Audio Controller, modem etc in Device Manager.

 

You guys are the best.

Disabling the extra joystick combo card that I don't need with broadband did the trick.

Booted up like a charm

Chalk up one more win for MajorGeeks.com

Now off to remove that bootvis program

Thanks again for everyone's help. People like you are what makes these forums great. Sometimes you get frustrated trying to fix a problem, when all you need to do is come at it from a different POV. I would have never guessed it was a driver causing my PC to hang so long, I thought spyware/virus/fragmented drive/corrupted windows/ and was down to bios and boot sector lol.

 

Excellent.

 

Insomniac I'v used bootvis load's and never had any problen I also know loads of people from other forums that have used it many times and never had any problem's,If so many people are having problems with bootvis why is it a download on this site?And also why would it score so highly in user votes 4.7 out of 5.0.It also scores well other download sites.I have never heard anyone complaining.

Is there a specific article you have seen that says it is bad?Or personal experience?It also helped solve this problem.I just want to know for sure before I stop using it.