Help with boot time

Hi all. first post...and its a lame one

not too sure why my xp takes as long as it does to boot. I've done all the obvious things like..

cleaned startup programs
disabled all unused onboard motherboard devices
set hard drive as primary boot device
other miscellaneous bios and window tweaks

i ran a bootvis trace, though havent tried optimizing with that yet. will try soon as i post this and see if it helps.


what i don't get is why there is so much empty space between drivers. is this normal? also, any suggestions?

thanks.

 

ok i ran the optimizer and it shaved off almost ten seconds. Its still not too much of a worry, but I noticed my disk initiation time in bootvis is around ten seconds. I've read the normal value for this is around 2 seconds. The windows isn't brand new anymore but it did the same thing new. This motherboard I'm on now and my previous one both had this same behavior also. My first one though, old asus a8n, was a fast booter.

I am using an IDE hd in addition to my SATA, but i have completely disabled that controller in the bios AND unplugged it, and that didn't help, so i know its not a master/slave configuration.

I can only come up with 3 culprits...my motherboard or hd, since all other components have been changed at some point, or my windows installation. would it make any sense at all that a windows site license () boots slower than a normal windows install?

please help

 

your hdd is probably dieing a slow and horrible death.

 

i honestly wasn't expecting bootvis to do anything since its supposed to be an automatic feature of windows now anyways, but hey ill take the extra seconds haha.

xp sp3. stays fully updated. and yes its been like this even on my previous build (with same sata hd) and even with service pack 2 which does point to hd now that i think about it.

What exactly is nwiz responsible for? i couldn't find a real answer to that. am i gonna need it if i end up overclocking? some people say so.

current hardware:

asus p5q pro (p45 series)
evga GTX 260
e8500 core2duo 3.16GHz
2gb OCZ ram
700w thermaltake psu
dvd burner drive
250gb sata hd
500gb ide hd (lol right? :-D)

not sure if that much was really necessary, but seeing as its a brand new build, i would have thought it would be nice and zippy. i will try both scanning hd and pulling hardware out and seeing if either turns up anything. thanks again.

 

How long does it take your machine to get to where you can do anything?
My older P4 HP Pavilion is up and running in less than 1 minute, and that includes the time it takes to enter my password.

 

well that bootvis says processes are still being started at like 70. i'm pretty sure that came down a bit with the optimization. Around a minute is still a bit too long for my hardware..and expectations. and im not even using a login screen.

ran chkdsk. not too sure how to interpret all of this, but i don't see any bad sectors. correct me if i'm off.

Event Type: Information
Event Source: Winlogon
Event Category: None
Event ID: 1001
Date: 2/16/2009
Time: 7:32:34 PM
User: N/A
Computer: BIGRED
Description:
Checking file system on C:
The type of the file system is NTFS.

A disk check has been scheduled.
Windows will now check the disk.
Cleaning up minor inconsistencies on the drive.
Cleaning up 12 unused index entries from index $SII of file 0x9.
Cleaning up 12 unused index entries from index $SDH of file 0x9.
Cleaning up 12 unused security descriptors.
CHKDSK is verifying file data (stage 4 of 5)...
File data verification completed.
CHKDSK is verifying free space (stage 5 of 5)...
Free space verification is complete.

244198400 KB total disk space.
51723660 KB in 45455 files.
14824 KB in 4745 indexes.
0 KB in bad sectors.
129372 KB in use by the system.
65536 KB occupied by the log file.
192330544 KB available on disk.

4096 bytes in each allocation unit.
61049600 total allocation units on disk.
48082636 allocation units available on disk.

Internal Info:
50 d8 00 00 23 c4 00 00 aa 0a 01 00 00 00 00 00 P...#...........
b3 00 00 00 01 00 00 00 f7 03 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
fc 45 14 04 00 00 00 00 62 e1 44 13 00 00 00 00 .E......b.D.....
d4 07 57 04 00 00 00 00 5e 29 ea d1 02 00 00 00 ..W.....^)......
b8 c9 e1 bb 08 00 00 00 ca d0 62 b0 0b 00 00 00 ..........b.....
b0 aa ba bc 00 00 00 00 10 3a 07 00 8f b1 00 00 .........:......
00 00 00 00 00 30 f6 54 0c 00 00 00 89 12 00 00 .....0.T........

Windows has finished checking your disk.
Please wait while your computer restarts.

 

thanks for the backup attitude

but yes plod. i would say i know my way around a pc fairly well and i've done all the basic stuff like that. in fact, i only have 25 processes running right now including firefox and task mgr

and yes plod i'm familiar with the fact that the optimize feature of bootvis is now integraded in windows. i was using it merely to show a point, and was pleasantly surprised to drop a few seconds on startup.

on that note though...as far as it still helping for some people, is it known how often windows automatically optimizes startup? maybe bootvis helps some by optimizing between windows' automatic ones? just a theory. if windows' boot files are anything like the rest of the operating system, they could use optimizing pretty much every time it starts

i've yet to set down and start snatching hardware out but will do soon. are there any other diagnostics i can run on the hd if pulling hardware still points that way? i'd like to know for a fact before i buy a new one.

 

Just my 2 cents, but I was experiencing an identical problem and did just about everything you did. Then I downloaded HD Tune
http://www.majorgeeks.com/downloadget.php?id=4130&file=15&evp=79c102b6a94f55b96df38f68f2d842bf

This checked the benchmark time of my WD SATA hard drive. Although the HD worked, I found two problems. Firstly, there were 2 bad sectors right where Windows was installed. Secondly, the speed at which the HD was reading was slow. I had a maximum speed of 55MB/s and a minimum of 8MB/s. It also ran typically around 20MB/s. My new WD SATA runs at 90MB/s max and 55MB/s min. From power on to desk top in about 45 seconds...a huge improvement.