Slow Vista boot time for 1520

I have a problem with slow vista boot time. It takes it 3 minutes to go to desktop and a total of 4mins 30 secs to fully load to the welcome centre and sidebar.

I did a fresh install of vista home premium after the laptop.

My specs are:
T7100 1.8Ghz
2GB Ram
Nvidia 8600GT
120GB 5400rpm
Vista Home premium


In terms of software, I have zone alarm internet suite, nero, office 2007 which may or may not load stuff during startup. I have 64 processes after a clean boot.

Any suggestions on speeding up the boot time? What can I change7

 

A friend of mine just got a Vostro 1500 which is extremely similar to the 1520, the first I did was help her go though and clean up all the processes and little applications that came with the notebook, you will need to do something similar. I can tell with absolute certainty that the poor start up times have nothing to do with the hardware components.

 

These startup times are after a clean install of vista.

 

Even on a clean install, Vista (or XP for that matter) has a lot of services loaded by default at startup, contributing to startup times and overhead. For example, on services.msc, here's what i've set to Manual (instead of Automatic) because I currently don't use them, or because I can start them manually when I need them :

• Apple Mobile Device set Automatic to Manual
• Smart Card set Automatic to Manual
• Tablet PC Input Service Automatic to Manual
• Bluetooth Support Service Automatic to Manual
• Certificate Propagation Automatic to Manual
• Dell Internal Network Card Power Management Automatic to Manual
• Function Discovery Resource Publication Automatic to Manual
• Portable Device Enumertaor Service Automatic to Manual
• System Event Notification Service Automatic to Manual
• Terminal Services Automatic to Manual
• Windows Error Reporting Service Automatic to Manual
• Windows Event Log Automatic to Manual
• Secondary Logon Automatic to Manual
• Shell Hardware Detection Automatic to Manual
• UPnP Device Host Automatic to Manual
• Windows Image Acquisition Automatic to Manual
• Background Intelligent Transfer Service Automatic to Manual
• Windows Update Automatic to Manual


Caveat - if you are not comfortable with messing with services, it would be best to leave it alone. If you have some adventure in you, the definitions are usually enough to see you through. If you "hit a wall", know that you can switch back to Automatic and restart the service. Nothing is uninstalled.

On "stock" configuration, ie a fresh install, Windows is ready to be applied to all kinds of networks and configurations it was designed for. That translates to almost all those "features" being run at startup.

It's amazing what the above, combined with managing your startup processes and programs, can really make a big difference in boot times.

Good luck.

Paolo

For the "gravy" on speed, do some Google-ing on write-caching, ReadyBoost, page files, Indexing and power management.

 

Thanks for the advice. Will be looking into that. When changed to manual, does it remove itself from startup? ie. saving a process?

What are your startup times anyway? Noticed a marked difference when applying your changes?

 

Thanks, if I knew how to Rep you I would.

 

Check out Black Viper's Guide for the other Vista services. He has also made a guide for "a faster (and less annoying) Vista PC"

 

black viper's guide isnt bad but dont use just solely that, IMO. i used a couple of sources to edit my services to ensure i got the best startup times i could possibly get without limiting myself or my programs. just take your time, do lots of reading and you will notice when you are done a decrease in loading times.

 

Yes, changing it to Manual removes it from the startup.

I've definitely seen a change after running the tweaks I mentioned. Desktop appears a couple seconds after I click ok on the user logon screen, and is immediately available to me as soon as I see it. Sorry, I don't have "actual" times.

Like Brian says - take the time to evaluate and observe as switching services to manual. Document as you shut down services so you can reference it in case you use your computer differently in the future, or if you turn off something you thought you didn't need. Likewise, if you hit a "sweet spot", you have a nice reference to a sleek system configuration.

Regards,
P

 

Anyone else timed their start ups? It'll be interesting to know. I did a search on youtube and saw some really quick ones. There was one that booted up in 26 seconds using a SSD hard drive!!

I removed a few of the processes and the start times dropped by a minute to 3 minutes. Thats still very long by any means! My old laptop boots XP in under 2 mins.


Also, how many processes do you guys have at startup? I'm down to 54 processes now.

 

Right... I've noticed that the problem with slow boot times occurs after I update vista. I've timed it:

1. Clean reinstall + all drivers + office 2007 + zonealarm internet suite = 1min 40 secs to boot to desktop.

2. After setting up my Wifi and downloading all the updates, the boot times jump to 3 mins 30 secs with a long pause after the login.

Is this a problem with Wifi itself or the new MS updates? I have repeated this process twice and found the same problem.

 

That seems too much time for a startup issue. True that Zonealarm could take up a great deal of time to get loaded, but, are you sure your drivers are all correctly installed?

How about the hard disk SATA driver and the BIOS option for enabling AHCI vs ATA? Is everything all right there?

 

I've checked and the SATA drivers seem to be loaded correctly. BIOS is under AHCI/SATA mode.

I followed driver installation instructions to the letter from the dell drivers CD. As I said, the boot times slow down lots immediately after I set up Wifi and download updates. To retrace which update is slowing it down will be difficult as there are too many!

 

hmmm i think it may have something to do with the updates, my boot times where 33 secs but after the updates its gone up to 42 secs,

did u try a fresh install...??

 

It is the nvidia drivers, If you uninstall them, I guarantee that your boots will be significantly improved. For some reason, one of the nvidia processes delays the start of the sidebar and everything after. It has been the case for me, I get 37 second boot times - 4 seconds for typing in my password, so I rekon without it it would be 33 seconds.

Now, I am going to suggest something crazy here, something that many others will disagree with, and probably for good reason, but I believe in it...adopting a policy of Anti-Anti-Virus Software, that is, not using any anti virus software. If you adopt a good security policy, it really isn't needed. Run as a standard user, don't open up those .scr attachments, stay behind a router w/ built in firewall, download files from trusted sources...etc.

Not running an AV will increase performance dramatically.



More reading at http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000803.html

 

wow... 33 seconds!!!!! I would even be happy with 1 minute! mine's 3.5 minutes. and yes, it is a fresh install... twice! will need to sort this out. arrrgghhh

 

Hello ppen. I don't know if the updates are to blame, but my M1330 is slow after setting up Wi-Fi.

Whenever I boot, the following happens:
1. Sound, Internet Connection, & Battery icons show up in the taskbar. The Internet icon has a red X on it.
2. The task bar just sits there waiting for something.
3. Internet Connection icon changes from red X on it to normal icon, and then suddenly everything else starts to load.

If I go to Network & Sharing Center while the Internet Connection icon has a red X on it, then it notes: "Identifying... (Public network)." I have no idea what it means, but it sits there for some time (20-30 secs) trying to "identify" whatever it's trying to identify. Very frustrating considering that my XP laptop connects to my network almost instantaneously after booting.

Setting my network to be known as a Private network doesn't change anything. It still says "Identifying... (Public network)" at the beginning.

Dell says that this is normal. They said that Vista is more resource intensive than XP. That's true, but the fact that it sits there for 30 secs trying to connect to my network is annoying.

 

Is your boot time fast though? I time it after the BIOS loads when the vista scroll bar appears in the centre to the point the desktop fully loads up (including side bar). How fast is your boot time? After mine fully lodas, I also get a lag before the internet connection loads up. ie. laptop connects to router but says "local only" and this takes a while before its able to connect to the internet.

 

From the time I press the power button until I see the logon screen, it takes me 45 secs.

10 seconds later, I see my desktop (total time: 55 secs). Then, before my laptop connects to my network, it takes 45 seconds. So my laptop boots in a total of 1 min 40 secs with my laptop staying idle for 45 secs while it connects to the internet. Why do I know it stays idle? Because it does some work, then stops and there is no more hard drive access or CPU usage. It just sits there waiting.

I believe we have the same problem. And like you described, my connection says "Local Only" for a while before connecting. Very frustrating.

What router do you have? I have a Linksys WRT54G. Maybe this is a router issue.

 

Some things that could solve this problem but didn't work for me:
- http://support.microsoft.com/kb/934430
- If you don't broadcast the SSID for your Wireless network, then try broadcasting it to see if that changes anything
- Reinstalled the wireless card drivers.

I am still looking for a solution to this.

 

I'm so jealous! What are your specs? Your boot time is essentially under 1 minute. (I count it from Vista loading status bar to a fully loaded desktop running sidebar. ) I have an old 3COM router. I did have an issue initially with vista not accepting WPA-PSK1 so I changed my security to WEP. I don't think its a router issue as I've tried disabling wifi and the boot times are very similarl

 

Nah, my specs aren't very impressive.

XPS M1330
Intel Core 2 Duo T7300 2.0 GHz, 4MB Cache
120 GB 5400 RPM
2.5 GB of RAM (originally 1GB)
Intel GMA X3100

I try to disable any startup programs that are unnecessary. Also, as my Anti-Virus, I don't use Norton. I use CA Anti-Virus, it's much lighter and not as resource intensive (except when it does updates, there is a lot of disk access). I don't use the Windows Sidebar since it slows down the boot time and it's not very useful to me.

 

My boot time from the time I press the power button until it gets the the logon screen is roughly 38 seconds. Then after I put in my password, it takes hardly any time to get to my desktop, and <10 seconds for it to be ready to go. In the task manager it shows 52 processes running as I'm typing this. This is after a reformat and a few system tweaks.. taking things off the startup menu and removing services.

I don't have any anti-virus software load up when I start either. Hope this helps for comparison.

Also, you can remove things from the Start>Programs>Startup folder.. I'm not sure if that is altogether different from msconfig startup menu, but I did that too. Good luck

 

I posted on this recently-look here for some tips;

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=160840

I boot to my login screen in about 47 seconds. That is without a clean install. Man, I wonder what it would be then! hehe. I found that deleting a bunch of useless fonts really helped. Also, delaying the start of your antivirus program (or not using it) could help as well.

3 minutes is nuts. Let's fix that! I'm sure you can get under a minute...

 

ppen, I'm sure you can make your laptop boot faster.

I wouldn't mess with SuperFetch. From what I've read, SuperFetch in Vista is very different from Prefetch in XP. And I read that it shouldn't be messed with. SuperFetch is the reason why you never have much free physical memory in Vista.

I'm not done setting up my laptop, but after installing some of the software/drivers I needed, I removed the following from my startup:
- HotKeysCmds (Enables hot keys for Intel's graphic card)
- IgfxTray.exe (The tray icon for Intel's graphic card a.k.a. a waste of memory)
- QTTask.exe (QuickTime...I've been disabling this for as long as I can remember)
- Reader_sl (Makes Adobe Reader startup faster. Not necessary for me. If I use Adobe Reader a lot, SuperFetch will make sure it boots faster)

I have yet to tweak my Services. That will take more time since I will have to disable them one by one. But there are a lot of guides online on disabling unnecessary services in Vista. Some also warn you about services that you should absolutely _not_ disable.

Using an anti-virus that is not as resource intensive as Norton or McAffee can make a HUGE difference. I once had a laptop that was extremely slow. I had a feeling that Norton was to blame. So I uninstalled it and my laptop's boot time and overall responsiveness was noticeably faster. As an alternative, I used Antivir, which doesn't use a lot of resources. Now I use CA Anti-Virus. I bet I could go without anti-virus since I am very careful but I prefer having one

Also, having a lot of memory helps since it avoids having to use paging files which are slower than physical memory since they're stored on the hard drive. But you already have 2 GB. That should be enough.

 

3 minutes is just insane for a 1.8ghz proc,u should get it under 1min no matter what....... i am starting to think that there might be a defect in his hardware since he has already done a clean install

ok just check in ur power management whether its set to high performance mode and not in battery save mode, if that doesn't solve ur problem better get a replacement

 

Thanks for the advice! I'll try those tweaks tonight when I get back. I have essentially removed most of my startup programs. Only quickset is left in the startup folder. Using MSCONFIG, I only have the intel and nvidia drivers at startup.

Just thinking about it, I don't have a login screen as I didn't enter a password when I first set vista up. It goes straight through. From cold boot to what I think the login screen should be, it takes under 1 minute.... about 45-50 seconds I think. Does not having a login screen make a difference??


The rest of the loading takes over 2 minutes. From the login screen, I get a blank screen for about 1 minute where I can just see the mouse cursor. I'm sure this delay is before the startup programs are loaded.

I've looked into the performance logs but it doesn't show any particular error. It just says critical problem. Boot time = 200000+ ms

This has to be a software problem. Can't be a hardware one. Can it?

 

here's an idea: boot into safe mode and see how long that takes. since only critical drivers and services are loaded at startup in safe mode, that will be a good way to get a baseline for what the system can do. from there, go back into Vista and continue tweaking with programs and services that are starting up.

 

Just tested it with the login screen enabled --> Still the same slooooow boot time. I can't think of anything else. Loosing hope. My last attempt will be to reinstall vista again and do the drivers update slowly.

Performance log --> Event viewer:
Log Name: Microsoft-Windows-Diagnostics-Performance/Operational
Source: Microsoft-Windows-Diagnostics-Performance
Date: 29/08/2007 00:47:23
Event ID: 101
Task Category: Boot Performance Monitoring
Level: Warning
Keywords: Event Log
User: LOCAL SERVICE
Computer: Inspiron
Description:
This application took longer than usual to start up, resulting in a performance degradation in the system startup process:
File Name : svchost.exe
Friendly Name : Host Process for Windows Services
Version : 6.0.6000.16386 (vista_rtm.061101-2205)
Total Time : 271ms
Degradation Time : 136ms
Incident Time (UTC) : 28/08/2007 23:44:30


AND:

Windows has started up:
Boot Duration : 134904ms
IsDegradation : false
Incident Time (UTC) : 28/08/2007 23:44:30

 

Finally narrowed it down to the wretched Zone Alarm Internet Suite 7.1. I thought it hardly slowed down my system. I had to reinstall again for the 3rd time and the system has been cold booting < 1 minute from the time I press the power button to a fully loaded desktop.

I haven't fully installed all the updates as yet but once I installed zone alarm, the boot time jumped to over 2 minutes. That's me gone off zonealarm for life now. Its a pity cos I really liked it and have been using it on XP for years.

I'll be updating vista next so we'll see if any other updates will slow it down.

 

i have this prpblem as well. i don't have any programs set to start on startup except the sidebar. my desktop loads in a\n acceptable time, but it takes forever for my internet to display that its working (it has an x for a while even tho im connected) and for the bluetooth and quickset icons to load. any thoughts? i think it may have something to do with the graphics card because on the restart fater i updated my driver and after i reset it back to stock everything started up fine. also, the screen somewtimes goes to black then the desktop reappears, then bluetooth, quickset, and the network load.

 

What are your specs? How long is your boot time?

I found that the synaptics driver and zonealarm internet suite slows down the system to a halt.

But before windows update on a CLEAN install after all drivers installed, it takes about 1 minute from a cold boot to a fully loaded desktop.

 

i dont now the times, but after the desktop is loaded up, everything works, but the bluetooth and quickset icons dont show up
im running...
vista
c2d 2.2ghz
2 gigs ram
160gb 7200 rpm

 

ummm... try timing it with a clock/stopwatch... we can't guage how slow it is unless we know how long it takes. for all you know, it may just be within normal limits.

 

guys...the desktop fully loads. then everything is fine for probably upwards of a minute. then the bluetooth and quickset load and the network icon refreshes. i know what normal limits are, and this is well outside.

 

i am with ppen on this one. The synaptics is what really slowed me down. I had a 40 sec boot time without the synaptics starting, but the scrollers wouldn't work. With the synaptics enabled i was usually having around 1:23 boot times. I couldn't believe that this alone could cause this. That was also with no AV program. I now updated my touchpad with the new synaptics driver and free AVG and i will see what my bootimes are.

 

ok so this is my findings...time starts on the restart when the computer starts back up again and the black screen turns a dark grey type color. Time ends when welcome center and sidebar are both fully opened.

No AV or synaptics...40 seconds

Free AVG, no synaptics...45 seconds

No AV, with synaptics...1 minutes, 23 seconds

Free AVG with synaptics...1 minute 32 seconds.

With synaptics on, it loads to the desktop very fast and same as with it off. The mouse does not have the loading circle so one would think its done loading. But it sits there for a good 20 or so seconds then finally it loads everything and the welcome center and sidebar and everything pops up.

Is there anything that can be done?? Something as simple as the touchpad is adding a lot of wasted time. I wish it could just be disable but then you can't use all the cool features of the new driver! Hope this helps...BUD

 

check your anti virus setting.. if its automatically scan the services,then you can set it to delay about 3 minutes or turn it off... in my desktop and laptop.. when my kaspersky automatically scan my startup and processes.. it will turn into black screen as you mention earlier for 1 minute.. so i just turn OFF the auto scan.. and after i enter my pass.. i have my desktop already..

 

I've got the same problem. I log on immediately at the logon screen and the computer looks ready to go right away, but the wireless network and quickset don't load for about 30 seconds, so I have to wait to do anything.

I connect to the internet wirelessly with a Linksys router. This all happened before and after a Vista reinstall. I'm running AV Free and quickset. That's about it. Task Manager shows 56 processes running right now.

 

anyone have an idea for the synaptics yet??

 

Have you tried using the latest drivers direct from synaptics website rather than dell?

As i don't use the touch pad often, I'm just not going to use the drivers.