Slow Boot

have a gateway nv53 series. running windows 7 home premium service pack 1 64-bit.

upon starting there is a very brief, less than a second gateway splash screen.
then comes the windows splash screen lasting about 15 seconds.
followed by black screen for another 15 seconds.
another gateway splash screen follows for another 20 seconds.
finally get to the home screen which takes about a minute to finish loading.

am i being impatient or is this much too long a boot up. is there anything i can do to speed it up?

through msconfig the only thing i have starting is the avast antivirus.

i have run ccleaner and malwarebytes. seems to be clean.

it also takes a long time to open a program but once loaded seems to run pretty quickly.

any help would be appreciated.

thanks
smile
whril

 

Hi my friend , you could inform us about laptop's model , you must follow this :

Start - Run typing cmd - ok
in black panel typing

wmic csproduct get name, identifyingnumber

pushing enter to see your model , either hdd or memory is common problems to these behaviors

 

this is what i got when i typed it in the cmd window

identifyingnumer name

LXWGH02036001B36B32200 NV53

little confused for i did mention that it was a gateway nv53?

smile
whril

 

i must confess that happened to me the first time i typed it as well. didn't think to mention it.

now that this is all cleared up is there anything i can do to make this thing any faster? the booting doesn't bother me nearly as much as opening a program does. waiting 1 or 2 minutes for a browser to open gets old very quickly!

smile
whril

 

Let's first have a look at your computer's hardware.
Run Speccy and upload a screenshot of the summary info.
http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/speccy.html

 

That looks OK.
Clicking on RAM will show how much is being used, and clicking on Storage will show the free space on the disk.

 

That also looks OK except for the high RAM usage - that's ± 2 GB. I'm running Windows 7 Ultimate and the RAM usage is less than 1 GB.
And the RAM is slow - I'm guestimating the 2 modules are not identical?
Also, is Disk Defragmenter turned on?

 

disk defragmenter was set for weekly. i unchecked the box.

i wouldn't think the modules would be different? i have never changed them. i do know that before it came to me at some point it was in a computer shop that wiped it clean. i think that was a number of years ago. tho.

smile

 

In hindsight the speed won't make that big a difference - mine isn't much faster.
FWIW I have 2 non-identical RAM modules and because of that speed is halved.
Open Task Manager and look at what is hogging the RAM & also look at the CPU usage.

 

the following is the highest numbers on the task manager

cpu time usage
system idle process at 0:14:15
everything else is single digit

on memory (private working set)
explorer.exe on owner at 22,368
avastsvc.exe*32 on system at 16,648
scvhost.exe on system at 14,116
dwm.exe on owner at 15,132
everything else is in 4 digit range

 

i'm sorry. that was very sloppy typing, and even worse spell checking. it is svchost.

i just double checked there is no scvhost. just a whole slew of svchost.

 

Just to be sure... post screenshots of the first ± 10 processes for both CPU & Memory.
Make sure you select first the CPU and then the Memory columns.

 

Also state whether the screenshots were taken within say 10 minutes after Boot, midway through, or close to the end of a 'normal' session, it all helps us get a handle on what's happening and what we should be comparing with.

 

these screenshots were taken maybe 10 minutes after loading. as soon as i could open the browser and read this message.

i took a shot off all the processes. seemed just as easy as counting 10 down.

yesterday when i ran the task manager i did not have a browser up. today i did. i notice there is quite a bit of chrome up, but yet i only have one tab open. is this normal?

 

not that i am impatient. i generally am not. was just wondering if everyone was busy or gave up?

thanks!
smile
whril

 

In Task Manager click View > Select Columns... and check Memory (Working Set). Click the Working Set (Memory) tab and take another screenshot & post it.

I'm guesstimating no. But wait for the Chrome users to answer.

Time Zones...

 

these were taken about 10 minutes after turning on the laptop.

 

makes sense.
i am normally a very patient person. this week i have waited at the doctors for 2 hours because they "forgot" i was there. went to have my car serviced. waited over an hour for them to bring it up front after they finished because they "forgot" it was there. the snowplow lady "forgot" my driveway. and to top it all off work "forgot" to put my paycheck in my cubby box. think i just wanted to make sure that someone knew i was still here!

smile
whril

 

Everything seems OK, excluding the 51% memory usage. But even that shouldn't result in programs taking a long time to open. Hopefully another member can offer a possible explanation because I'm at a lost.
Sorry.

 

i would not say you are lost, at least not completely. we now know what is not wrong.

thanks for all you do!

smile

 

Open Control Panel > Windows Update and turn it off.
Restart your PC and see if there's a difference.
Also when opening programs.

Important! Remember to turn on Windows Update.

 

my windows update is always turned off. i check it manually. for some reason it was changed to check for updates so i changed it back to manually. it did make a 3 second difference. not much but progress.

smile

 

I am using win 7 32 bit too , updates is an nightmare running all the time , for my you could check your hdd's health

http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/hard_disk_sentinel.html

your hdd is 5400 rpm , maybe is a possible problem , even when is the last time which you have replaced the power supply unit my friend ?

 

being an older model laptop i don't think i would replace the power supply. at that point just upgrade to a more decent laptop. i will check the hdd's health when i get home from work tonight.
thanks!
smile

 

the sentinel tells me that the hard disk status is perfect.

temperature status is good.

on the s.m.a.r.t. it says on most of the items ok (always passing). there are some items that say just ok

under information there are 4 alerts.
required power for spinup
power required (seek)
power required (idle)
power required (standby)

under the regular alerts column there is nothing listed.

i ran the short self-test and it says no problems found.

not really sure how to read or use this program yet.

smile

 

OK people.

We are looking at a GATEWAY laptop. The hard drive is not older than dirt, but when is the last time a Gateway laptop was commercially available?

Though there may be a lack of bad sectors on a hard drive, however that does not mean other hardware isn't showing it's age, i.e., actuator arm or drive motor is/are slowing down.

I'm not a hardware expert, but I know an aging HDD when I see one...

 

I've seen behaviour similar to that that you describe being caused by a faulty card reader. It may be worth going into device management -> disk drives and uninstall the components of the card reader (they'll be reinstalled at the next boot).

 

I'm have to agree with you.

 

And to eliminate the card reader physically means disassembly to pull the ribbon cable.

Hardware is tough to diagnose without the machine. That being said, I'd like an initial BIOS date on the machine, and the date for the most recent update.

Also, I'd like to request the specific model number of this machine so we can not only date the hardware, but query any upgrades which have been made.

 

P.S. Looking at the Speccy report, this is the original HDD (Note for those who missed that).

The only salvation for this DDR2 machine is a new HDD, or SSD IMHO...

 

this is the information on the bios
bios version/date phoenix technologies ltd v1.05, 12/7/2009

the model number is a quick google search tells me that is from 2009.
ms2285

i am wondering if at this point it is even worth risking updating the bios or replacing the harddrive. seems more humane to just let the computer die a natural death?

 

thank all of you for your help!

after reading your posts i agree that the harddrive is dying. this is not my laptop, belongs to a friend. i am not fond of gateways and my advice to them is going to be run this one until it dies then get yourself an asus.

the only question i have now is on running the laptop all day. i am assuming that is easier on the hard drive than shutting down and restarting multiple times. or is it just for convenience? is it more likely to overheat being left on for extended periods of time?

again thanks!

smile

 

You're right about that.