Why is my DV9207 so slow?

I replaced Vista with XP in the hope that my laptop will starts and shuts down as fast as my Gateway 3502GZ, which has XP home. The DV9207 , now with XP Pro, it starts only slightly faster than Vista and still significantly slower than the Gateway. I tried everything including installing both laptops with XP Pro. The shut down time is the same on both machine, but the HP takes about 4 times longer to start. I might have to put Vista back since the speed gain under XP Pro is rather small. Either I have a slow HP or a very fast Gateway. But I just don't get it. The Gateway is 3-year old and it has a slower hard drive.

 

Might want to run HD Tune on your notebook. Four minutes is too long even for a 4200RPM drive especially if you've done a clean install.

 

As you suggested, I ran HD Tune on both laptops. Here are the results.

HP 5400RPM HD:

Transfer Rate

Minimum
21.0MB/sec

Maximum
39.7MB/sec

Average
32.2MB/sec

Access Time
17.9ms

Gateway 4200RPM HD

Transfer Rate

Minimum
8.3MB/sec

Maximum
27.2MB/sec

Average
21.7MB/sec

Access Time
17.5ms


I don't understand these numbers. Can you explain them? Thank you.

 

You hard drive seems ok.
Can you turning it on without the network and then shutting down? Does it help?
Do you have all windows updates?
Did you clean the bloatware?

 

Both laptops have the same fresh and clean install of XP Pro.

I turned off the network but it didn't help. I counted how long it took each laptop to start ( from the time I press the power button to the time I see the desktop.)

HP
1 minute 16 seconds

Gateway

32 seconds

 

Ok, type MSCONFIG in the Run menu and see what start-up items you have.
Is there a chance that the HP has only 512mb of RAM?

 

The HP has 1GB of Ram. I even tried starting in diagnostic mode, which disables all start-up items and most services. It's still as slow as before. I get 15 bars during start-up regardless of how many services or start-up items I remove. I get 5 bars with the Gateway. At this point I have to believe that the HP is just a slow laptop.

DV9207 laptop owners, can you time your laptop's start-up time? Do you get around 15 bars during start-up? Maybe you have a lemon too. Or maybe HP laptops are just slow.

 

I did this for another user's question:

dv9000
Windows Vista Ultimate
1.8GB on Memory Stick as Readyboost memory
2gb ram
2.0ghz core2
100gb 7200rpm primary drive
160gb 5400rpm second drive
HP wireless assistant program uninstalled
LOTS of stuff in startup (Outlook, auction sentry, sidebar, Norton, etc)
Audio drivers unknown (whatever came w/ computer)

Approx.
45 sec from shutdown to password screen
15 sec from entering password to desktop
2 sec from desktop to showing internet connection

 

Did you check the event viewer system, security and application logs for any errors or timeouts?

 

booyoo,

In the sytem log, there is an error with the service control manager during start-up (event 7000). I don't have a clue what this means. Any idea? Thank you.

 

First you should test whether the problem is just bootup. You can confirm this by running some benchmarks (sysmark, pcmark, superpi, etc) and compare the speed.

Next you should try doing a scandisk and then defragging your hard drive. Finally try running bootvis (it's a free program for winxp that optimizes your pc for quick bootup, it basically defrags and reorganizes your hard drive so the boot up files can be accessed very quickly).

Also, to make sure it isn't some windows problem (like some old drivers clogging up your interrupt vectors), check each single driver and make sure they are up to date and that it is not problematic (i.e. latest is not always the best).

 

double click the event entry to see which service caused the error..

 

Thank you, ruibing. I will try bootvis soon.

booyoo,

This is what it says:

The XAudioService service failed to start due to the following error: XAudioService is not a valid win32 application.

 

First off, failed services definitely delay boot time as the operating system may need to wait for a timeout to happen in order to continue the booting process. XAudioService appears to be part of the Conexant audio driver. Do you have full audio functionality once the pc is done booting? Maybe the audio softpaqs needs to be reinstalled.

 

I am formatting and reinstalling XP right now. This way I will have a better idea of what's going. Thanks everyone. I went to Fry's and played with four HP DV9000 laptops. They all show 6 bars when booting. There is definitely something wrong with my laptop.

 

Bootvis does two things, it analyzes a complete bootup from beginning to end and will tell you where it is spending the most amount of time.

I also suspected it was some driver or services trying to load up or run. It's annoying but the only real way to tell is trial and error by trying to upgrade each driver and doing a little research on it. Most likely ones are vga, sound, sata, and network.

 

Apparently there is nothing with the hardwares. It starts up quickly now (6 bars.) However, I can't install the audio driver this time around. Error message was something like "Can't find media device for this driver." The fax modem drive didn't install either.

I am giving up. I am putting Vista back on.

 

You need the chipset driver in order to install the audio driver

 

Man, I am going crazy here. Yesterday, I reinstalled Vista (from my apricorn easy gig II back up ) mainly to test the back up. It worked beautifully. Today, I installed XP back again. Now it takes 56 seconds to start up. Everything is working. The event log shows no error. Why is it still so slow?

I did a trace using bootvis. It shows this warning "number of physical drives in the trace file is 0. Trace file has invalid system configuration information." What does this mean?

OK, after optimizing with bootvis, it now starts in 48 seconds. That's still too slow.

 

Hmm that sounds like a driver problem. How did you install your SATA drivers? Did you slipstream it or disable it?

 

48sec is not "too slow". you don't have 7200 rpm hdd to expect 30-35s boot time