how to speed up win xp booting

One thing I've noticed is that my boot time for winxp has shot through the roof.

AMD64 3200+ venice core
1gb ram

When I first installed it, it booted in 4 seconds. I left the cpu and ram at stock speeds, 2.0ghz and 200mhz respectfully. Now it takes up to 15 seconds to boot up, even with the cpu oc'd to 2.4ghz, which runs equivalent to a p4@3.8ghz, and the cas latency on the ram dropped to 2.5 (was 3 at stock). Memory bus still runs the same speed.

I've defragged the hard drive to hell with diskeeper.

My only suspicion would be the services, yet I do not see any additional services that would be causing this kind of slowdown.

And yes, this slowdown occured before any kind of overclocking was done.

Is there anyway to figure out what's caused this massive slowdown?

 

Go through services as well as the startup tab in msconfig.


You can try BootVis, but it's geared more towards techs than end users.

 

I takes me ~12-13 seconds to boot up. It never took only 4 seconds.

Thats on a 4400+ w/ 2gb of ram.

 

Maybe I was just a lucky sob, but I seriously booted up in only 4 seconds before.

 

I guess maybe we all judge differently what boot time is. Do you consider booting from the time the OS starts to load, or from POST?

 

It takes me about 15 secs from cold boot to last desktop icon.

And that's on a PIII 866 with 512 SDRAM.


There is NO way you can boot in 4 secs! (Even coming out of Standby takes longer)

 

As soon as it accesses the hard drive.

After a clean install it instantly went from post->load windows->startup screen within 4 seconds.

 

I'm talking from the moment you press the power button (from off), till the last program or icon on desktop loads (finishes loading).

There is NO way that can be done in 4 secs.

 

I'm talking about when the hdd is accessed and then the login screen comes up, as in the boot-up screen pretty much.

 

Besides startup stuff and services drivers for all your hardware will slow down. May be 1 of them is a bit buggy or have some tiny initialization issues. Think Bootvis can point finger directly but I wouldnt worry so much - not as long as OS is fast enough once ready. XP and you have probably just adjusted to computer and that means delay of some seconds. You must have installed this and that since magical 4 seconds. Is it before and after installation of AV resident scanner?

 

Make sure all your partitions are NTFS.

Make sure all your PATA disk-drives are using DMA. More Info MS KB Q817472

Make sure all your NICs are using static IP or doesn't timeout on DHCP.

Check Event Log for any messages generated at startup.

Also make sure to mention which part of the bootup that is slow:
1. Power Button to Windows XP loading screen shows.
2. Windows XP Loading screen to Windows XP Login Screen
3. Windows XP Login Screen to Desktop.