Long Startup - dv2500t

I just got my new notebook today. I cleaned up all the crapware and such. But the notebook seems to take an inordinate amount of time to startup. On a brand new notebook, I really expected better startup time than this.

I can get to where I type in my password quickly, but after that, it takes 2-3 minutes to start up. The longest is after it says welcome with the little spinny thing, the screen goes black with a pointer. The loading circle comes up after a little while, but not very long. It hangs on this black screen for ~2 minutes.

Anyone else have this problem? The only major program that starts with Vista is McAfee security center. Could it be caused by this?

Completely unrelated questions: Can I uninstall HP Total Care and HP update without problems? Also, how do you get rid of that stupid HP Yahoo! Search thing on the taskbar.

 

Yes this can cause a very slow startup. MCAFEE is very much a resource hog and you should consider a differnt av and firewall. Search the forums for related posts about both free av and fw. To check the startup programs running, click on the window (old start button) in the search box type msconfig and then go to startup. All of those checked box programs are running at startup. If you disable the ones you really don't need then this will improve your startup times dramatically.

Yes you can. I had something called BigFix that did the same thing. You probably know how to do the updates and drivers etc so this is not necc. Just remember to check for new drivers say about once a month.

I'm not familiar with this but I don't think it can be removed unless its a program like an exe in the add/remove programs list. Maybe someone else can shed some light on this.

 

You can't remove it, but you can hide it using the taskbar properties..I did it with mine and it doesn't show up anymore, but it does not necessarily mean the search bar is uninstalled.

 

To hide any toolbar, simply open up Internet Explorer. Then on the upper right you'll see a "Tools" button with an arrow pointing down. Click this and go to "Toolbars". From there you can hide any tool bars you may have.

 

Do you have any reccomendations for FW and AV. On my old XP comp I was using ZoneAlarm and Avira Antivir but I'm not sure if those are Vista compatible.

I've got another question for people with 8400M GS GPU's. What drivers are you using. I'm having some difficulties with Medal of Honor (OpenGL failure on game startup) and was wondering if perhaps it was the drivers.

P.S. Just uninstalled McAfee and startup time reduced to 30 sec. They must need to work on their resource managment in Vista or something!

 

I'm running XP with Mcafee and my startup times from the password is about 45 seconds. What programs are running at startup?

 

Here is my start up program list. (from msconfig)

Windows Defender
Alps Pointing Device Driver
RAID Event Monitor
HP Quick Play
HP Quick Launch Buttons
HP Wireless Assistant (2 instances for whatever reason)
Java Platform
NVIDIA Driver Helper Service
Nvidia Driver
NVIDIA Media Center Library
nwiz
Microsoft Windows (duh)
Adobe Acrobat
Adobe Reader Synchronizer

 

@OP: In case you haven't already: Start->Run->msconfig->ms->Startup. Uncheck what you don't need or want at startup. You can check the running processes while you're at it: Start->services.msc.


Edit: Guess I'm too slow a typist. lol

 

McAfee is not a good AV program anyways. Zonealarm is not compatible with Windows Vista. I'm using Kaspersky Internet Security for it's AV and firewall. I would rather prefer to use Kaspersky AV and Zonealarm, but like I mentioned, it's not compatible.

 

I have a dv6500t and even after uninstalling all the bulk nav software and putting in CA EZAntivirus 2007 my computer does the same thing. It seems pretty quick to get to the login screen but once you log in it takes FOREVER. I'm thinking of trying to do the clean install.

 

Clean installs are the way to go if you can. My GW came with a clean install disc and a bloatware install disc. Not quite sure why I got the latter but at least GW gave me a choice.

 

Man thats alot. I would say that you certainly don't need Java Platform (it will run when it needs to) * Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Reader Synchronizer (same) * NVIDIA etc. (I have an ATI card so I can't comment but I don't run any ATI stuff and my graphics work fine, you can test it and see and the worst thing is you'll have to turn it back on)

I suggest to experiment with each one to see if you need it or not and you will improve your startup times. I only have 4 things that are necc for my startup.

 

Yeah, but you are still the man!! And I forgot about the services.msc bit.

 

I use a router for my firewall, I don't go to phishy websites, porn, questionable etc. and I use symantec av corp edition free from work.

 

One last post. The website below is a Vista tweak guide and it was helpful to me when I started with Vista. This guide is very informative and will help clean up a lot of the stuff that causes system congestion. http://www.tweakhound.com/vista/tweakguide/index.htm

 

You might also want to review the event viewer (in control panel-administrative tools) to see if any hardware driver or service takes an unusual time to startup or time-out.

 

for av software: I recommend ESET's NOD32! check out the reviews at

http://anti-virus-software-review.toptenreviews.com/eset-nod32-review.html

 

Also, it seems that the UAC (user account control) really slows down startup. I turned it off, and now that black screen just flashes and my desktop comes up. Granted, it decreases security and you get that popup saying your system is not secure, you don't have to approve every stinking thing you do on your computer and you get a 1-2 min faster startup (at least for me!)

 

I took it off personally, it just became annoying!!!!!!!

 

I think the slow start might indicate future motherboard problem

 

It's not slow anymore though...

 

sudo apt-get install firefox

 

Your first few startups will undoubtedly be the slowest. HP needs to install all its software, windows updates need to configure, windows configurations need to update, etc.

That said, even after the first few boot-ups, with an out-of-the-box HP laptop, there is still so much garbage that it will severely hog the resources of your laptop.

The dv2500t and a good amount of RAM should handle most of that well though. I don't think getting a new AV/firewall is necessary especially if you've already purchased subscriptions to the one you own. While Mcafee may take up more resources than some alternatives, there's still a lot more to clean up before you need to resort to throwing away money spent.

Backing up your C:\SwSetup directory and a clean Vista install is probably the best possible way to go, but if you can't do that, uninstall as much HP software as you can (like Total Care), and remove as many services as are safe. Stop them and disable them first before removing:

To remove, in cmd.exe as Admin: sc delete "Service Name"

Search this forum for HP software you can remove and Google for descriptions of Vista services. If you can't do a clean Vista install, this process will take a while.

 

I did a lot of work with my dv6000t to improve boot time and wound up with a 3 minute boot!. I tried to undo a lot and fared no better.

I did a clean install, removed crapware (including anti-virus), installed AVG and now am at least under 2 mins. My tx1000z went through the same process and I am now under 1:30 except on it I used Webroot Spy Sweeper with Anti-Virus. From my experience I can't recommend messing around in msconfig unless you really understand the tool and how to use it (i don't).

 

I had the same problem with my new dv9500t: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=137168

I think my resolution to the problem worked quite nicely.