Slow boot-up: Yuck

Yes, she's old, but not that old. I'm running a Toshiba Satellite Pentium 4, 2 GHz, 512 RAM, 40 Gig Hard drive, Windows XP.

Once she's up and running, she's a smoothly oiled machine. But why are my boot-up times so horribly slow? Is Norton hogging that much memory?

I don't have anything funky running in Startup, and a check of msconfig doesn't show any unusual things running in the background. I'd disabled all but the essentials.

I suppose my question is this: Do those clean-up-your-Ram programs really do any good? Or is my best bet just to uninstall a few of my larger programs such as Photoshop? Should I just install more RAM? What's a good step-by-step process for speeding up boot-up times?

Thanks!

 

More ram will help. 1 Gig is the optimum.

Overall, Norton, is your major issue. IMHO. When was the last time ye cleaned out crap, using ccleaner:

http://majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=4191

And when was the last time ye defragged?

 

What's the best option instead of Norton? I've read all kinds of different views on anti-virus software. But if I want something but unintrusive and effective, what should I purchase?

 

Why purchase, when ye can get for free? I prefer avast!

http://majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=1968

Free for life. Yes, you must register for a key, but, other than that, free for life. The pro version isn't all that exciting, unless ye have a server, or like running scans via command line.

Btw, forgot to mention:

Welcome to Majorgeeks! We hope ye have a wonderful stay here!

 

What do you think about CA Internet Security. Supposedly it's used by "98% of Fortune 500 Companies." Then why haven't I heard of it?

CA is available for free (after rebate) at TigerDirect.com. Hmmm . . .

 

Really, I guess my problem is not enough RAM, and a slow-footed Norton. I want to get things tweaked before Vista, as I don't want my lack of resources to prevent a clean Vista installation and subsequent execution.

 

I use Microsoft Bootvis for speeding up my boot. It shows amazing results to the boot time.

http://www.majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=664

Download and install. Open the program and under "Trace" select "Next Boot + Driver Delays". Press "okay" and let the comp reboot. Then under "Trace" select "Optimize System" and click "Reboot now". Now let the program work. It can take a while for it to be done so don't be afraid if it looks like it has frozen - just let it work. After it has finished you can again do a Trace -> Next Boot + Driver Delays to see how much faster and better the boot seqeunce has become.

And as theefool said; RAM will probably be a good shot. But make sure - if you only are going to add new RAM to the already existing - that it can be run at the same speed and timings. The best alternative is to get 1 gb of completely new RAM to replace your old with (probably your current ram is working at slow speed (perhaps DD333 (167MHz) or DDR266 (133MHz) and bad timings (i.e. CL3)).

 

If ye are thinking of vista, more ram is needed. Also, what video card ye running?

 

I'm running NVIDIA GeForce4 420 Go (Toshiba).

Also, how do I determine the speed and timing of my existing RAM so I can make sure the new memory will match?