Windows Starting Slower Than I Clean My House

Firstly a HUGE thank you to David GP for replying to my first ever post.:wave
Please read my first post for more info, it is recent & titled "HijackThis & MSConfig-HELP". This is my friend's computer and she tells me it can take 10 minutes to start. I have tweeked the start up programs to see if this helps with little change, still takes forever. I have run Malwarebytes which found nothing, interestingly it scanned 345,087 files whilst Microsoft Security Essentials scanned 1874322 files:confused . No virus or malware was detected. She has 2GB Ram, 103GB Hard drive with only 9.43 free. I noticed her Gaming Graphics score was 2.6, I updated the NVIDIA drivers which dropped the score to 2.5. The computer is a Compaq Presario V6000, AMD Turion(tm) 64 x2 Mobile Technology TL-56, 1.80GHz, 32 bit O/S. She obviously has way too much stuff on this computer which is about 4 years old. Any suggestions on how we can speed start up. It takes about 51 seconds to get to her password, but after you type in the password, it takes forever to load.
As mentioned in my previous post, please be gentle and talk down to me because I am a novice. In saying that I once worked in a computer shop at the request of the owner because I am like a dog with a bone!!

 

Hi,
Take a look here....

http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=106650

this is a very good guide on how to do some in house cleaning, this should help with the slow start up issue.

iain.t :major

 

Thanks iain.t. I probably should have mentioned I have already utilised CCleaner, done a DeFrag. I will get my friend to sit next to me & convince her to remove some stuff. I will try Diskeeper Lite as you suggested because I only used the Microsoft DeFrag.
Thanks again.

 

You must get the free space on that drive to 25GB+ to regain a significant amount of performance. Uninstall anything that hasn't been used in the last 6 weeks would be what I would tell the owner.

Vista or Windows 7?

 

Thanks satrow. Windows Vista.

 

If you really need to make a fast-booting/rebooting PC, consider following this guide carefully.

 

I personally use IObit defrag, very friendly user interface and it will auto defrag daily to keep your machine (or your friends in this case!!! ) running smoothley. I think your friend needs to de-clutter, even if it means burning stuff to discs if she doesn't want to loose any data.
Have you used the start up in ccleaner, I use that to disable or remove any start up programs that I don't use. My laptop is six years old and I have it booting from powering up, loading windows and connected to the web in less than a minute.I have uploaded a screen shot of what I have to run at startup. As you can see from the spec's of my machine (visable in the screen shot) it is not the best of spec's, but if you keep on top of the maintanance side it can run just as well as it did the day you first fired it up!!

good luck in talking your friend round to de-cluttering, most Women are hoarders,I know my Partner and two Girls are, they'll not part with anything :-D:-D

iain.t :major

 

Ha, Iain, you can do without the top 2 (maybe top 3!) and the RealTek CPL

I've only got 3 in my startup now because I just updated Avast and it's nagging me to reboot

It's not only women that hoard, I've been guilty of it too

 

Are you serious!! confused Do you really only need a couple of things in Start Up?? Do you delete them rather than disable them? What about things like the mouse pad on a laptop? How will that work if it is not in Start Up??

I have 18month old twins and they are already hoarders. They stash food behind their booster for later :-D

 

It really depends on your hardware and security software as to how much you really need starting with Windows, each case has to be judged on the way it's used. Only the user will really be in a position to judge some of the things that others would block from auto-starting.

Disabling things via MSConfig is ok for testing, I use Autoruns because it's very powerful most people would be safer with StartupCPL.


Did you read the twins "The Gulag Archipelago" when they were younger?

 

For quite some time, I've been using soluto to find my boot times, and what to do with them.

http://majorgeeks.com/Soluto_d6634.html