My computer takes too long to boot.

I am not sure why, but my computer (HP pavilion a450n) takes a long time (normally about four minutes) to initialize when I boot up or reboot.

 

Hi and welcome to MajorGeeks.

We need more information, like operating system, to help diagnose the problem.

 

I am using Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition.

 

Click start then go to run. Type in msconfig and press enter. Go to the tab on the right labeled startup. Try unchecking somethings that you know you dont need. You could have alot of junk opening on startup that you dont need. Could be more than that though

 

You could also run a disk cleanup utility and clean out the trash, also uninstall programs u dont need and then chkdsk and defragment your drive, this will also help ur boot and shutdown.

 

deleting the prefetch will help a little. goto start > run > prefetch and delete all the files in there. I would download a program like tweakxp or something. that will delete the prefetch everyday for you...

 

Deleting prefetch won't help one iota. That's not what prefetch does.

If it did help, it would only help speed up a program when you click on it, not during normal Windows startup.

And that's assuming deleting prefetch works at all. The jury is still out on that one.

 

Open Task Manager on boot.

Ctrl-Alt-Del

How many processes are running, and what is the commit charge?

If you can, list what processes are running.