Long HD read after boot up

I finally got my laptop back from HP after the failed BIOS flash. Now that I have Vista and everything bacck on it it doesnt seem to run the same way it did before. At boot up I get a extremly long HD read. Even though I can access stuff on the system it seems to be slower at boot up because it looks like the HD is constantly reading. This goes on for around 5min or so. Anyone have a clue on why it would read like this even though I am doing nothing with the system and it should have long since loaded everything Windows needs at start?

 

Anyone happen to know what would be causing this?

 

Look under the task manager and see what process is the culprit. Since you mention HDD activity it most likly will be the indexing service creating the index for faster search. Depending on the number of files you have it should disappear after a while.

 

It very well might be the indexing causing the long HD read. Sadly though I do not belive now that its causing the excessive long boot up times. If I look at the performance logs, every time I boot up or shut down the system it gives errors and warnings for the length of time it takes. Sadly it doesnt give enough information most of the time to what exactly causes it. Once in a while it will says prefetching took to long or svhost was slow and such but there has to be another underlying problem as to why it takes forever to boot up. Its becoming increasingly aggitating because it didnt do this before I sent it in for HP to fix the BIOS on the machine. Now its slow starting every time and the indexing or whatever the HD is doing goes on for a good 5min after startup. At this rate I may have to ditch VIsta for XP again because of issues with it slowing down like this.

 

Might be a bad drive causing multiple re-reads...FWIW

 

If you have a large amount of RAM, Vista will be pre-caching data (SuperFetch) and sticking it in RAM for later use.

 

Guess thats probably it then. I have 2 gigs of system ram and a 4gig flash ram for the readyboost

 

Got the same problem with 2 GB of RAM. However, I also ran into the Blue Screen of Death if, for some reason, I've tried to access Internet or open some certain application. To make sure things work well, I have to let it run after log-in doing nothing for like 3-5 mins. When HDD led is not blinking, then, I can start using computer.

With the problem like this and also the Waikiki audio driver problem. I will definitely go back to Windows XP soon.

 

Go to the BIOS setup,see whether your HDD is in DMA mode or PIO mode.

 

Do you use ZoneAlarm firewall? I had this problem with zonealarm searching for an anti-virus software...
If the HDD starts operating as normal in 5 min, then it's not the PIO mode.

 

What mode should the HD be in and where can you can you see/change the setting. I dont recall anything like that in my BIOS