Startup MUCH too slow! (Unsolved problem for Team Major Geeks)

We've got three pages of getting mostly nowhere on this in this old thread:
http://66.98.158.200/vb/showthread.php?t=28068

Please read this (below) carefully and try to come up with NEW ideas (or point out missed ideas).

Dell Dimension 8300, P4, 60GB HD, 512MB RAM, XP Home, fully patched.

"... I'm thinking that with my specs, even with everything enabled, I still shouldn't be able to turn my PC on first thing in the morning, go to the bathroom, make coffee, feed the dog, get the paper, get dressed, sit down with coffee and still not have my desktop loaded. The slow shutdown/startup has been a problem since the getgo and was what prompted a call to Dell within a week or so of taking delivery."

NORTON was among the first things installed on the new machine.
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No apps in Task Manager at shutdown.
All Blackviper Services settings applied.
No viruses.
No spyware.
Safe Mode startup no different; slightly better shutdown from Safe Mode.
nVidia Driver Helper stopped.
Webshots uninstalled.
Yahoo! uninstalled.
Zone Alarm was a RECENT addition, so that's out of consideration.

Removed EVERYTHING (yes, the whole lot) that's listed in msconfig except Norton from the startup process. No help.

UNINSTALLED NORTON and ran RegScrubXP. No help.
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Open issues:
Goldfish: old drivers could make it start up slowly, or perhaps a network config that's not set up properly, or maybe a printer ... Perhaps she needs to set the BIOS up manually rather than automatically detect anything? or maybe it's checking the RAM? Bad battery?

robo: is there a Network Interface Card installed in this machine? If so, try uninstalling it, both physically and driver-wise...

bill asked: have you defragged lately? bill thought that might sound dumb. We disagreed.

Kaotic gave a Web link with several good ideas, but these are the only possibly relevant ones there for this setup:
1. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SYSTEM/CurrentControlSet/Control.
Click on the "Control" Folder.
Select "WaitToKillServiceTimeout"
Right click on it and select Modify.
Set it a value lower than 2000.
2. HKEY_Current_User\Control Panel\Desktop
AutoEndTasks. Default is "0". Set this value to "1".
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Unanswered Q's:
We haven't heard from Janet about whether she found anything in Event Viewer.
We haven't looked at anything about the BIOS yet.
We haven't tried Adryn's suggestion that this might be a good time to try Remote Assistance.
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OKAY, so ...
Janet will be looking in here later today or this evening. She has been heroically cooperative, and still has no reduction in startup-shutdown times.

Ideas for a plan would be welcome here.
Where do you think we should go next? Let's help this lady FIX this thing. (If we can.)

 

hi wizewiz
been looking at the bios manual here
http://support.ap.dell.com/docs/systems/dim8300/sm/syssetup.htm

now assuming theres maybe something not set right here as this problem has been there since the beginning maybe ask janet to make sure the bios is set to defaults although maybe its just me i cant see an option to set everything to default

or maybe we could look into these settings
boot sequence
auto power on (not sure what this option does but is disabled by default)
fast boot
system event log (displays system event log when switched on could be useful)
network interface controller(possibly disable this and see what happens)

just a few thoughts i had maybe someone else can see something else there

 

Ummm, I was kinda hoping to slip out the side door here. I have no new ideas to offer. Either of you guys wanna sorta watch this and interact with Janet?
(I think it's better -- like the last two times we worked with her -- to have just one person mainly questioning and guiding, when lots of us get in on this -- just my opinion.)

 

Just some thoughts:
1. Network card was mentioned, but incase it is needed, one might wanna make a sure it has a static IP if DHCP is not available.
2. Check for ghost devices.
3.Force an optimisation of the system(Similar to Bootvis):

4. Make a quick reinstall of WinXP Home (Requires install-cd, not restore-cd)

Like the others get more diagnostic information, is it the BIOS POST which consumes time or if it is after the WinXP logo shows. If the later then one might want to add the /SOS /NOGUIBOOT /BOOTLOG to the BOOT.INI and see what drivers are loaded (Maybe see which ones are consuming time), another option is to play around with Bootvis to monitor the startup.

P.S. Lowering the service timeout value below 2000 ms might be fatal if a service requires more than 2 sec to write its data to disk (Broken files), and it will only provide faster shutdown, not startup.

 

GLS suggested bootvis yesterday. I thot MS had said it didn't do anything XP doesn't manage by itself. MS took it down. Well, mebbe it's time to LISTEN to the General's original suggestion, and get her to put that in and use it. Somebody shd help her use it, tho. You don't just open that one and run it. And back when I ran it, there was a whole bunch of stuff you were sposed to do:

"Launch and choose Trace (Menu Bar), Next Boot + Driver Delays. Set to 3 repetitions, starting at 1. Leave set at auto reboot (whatever, not shutdown first). Takes a while -- about ten mins first time. Don't interrupt, even when it doesn't seem to be doing anything. It's creating 35 MB files! Watch for little pop-ups that tell you it's on time 2, etc. When done, prog doesn't open again after final boot.

Re-launch and choose Trace, Optimize. After a time (@ 5 mins, maybe), a small dialog says it's working, and this may take a few. It's re-arranging boot files on the HDD.

After it quits (and does a final re-boot, I think, but if the dialog closes and nothing happens for a minute) shut down, wait a few mins, and boot."

(Not very clear, but from my old notes.)

 

Thanks NIck! I thnk you're thinking of this one:

But if so, that one only slowed application launches ... or did it? I had a helluva slowdown and took it right out, so don't remember rebooting probs.

 

Howdy Nick. Since evidently none of us from yesterday are going to be on for a while, could you keep an eye out for Janet? Wouldn't want her to think that we have abandoned her to her problem