dv6500 & vista home premium boot time (history inside)

Hi, I purchase this system from best buy a few days ago.
Well, the first 3 start ups took 8 to 10 minutes each. We took it back to best buy to find out why it was taking so long and they recommended that it be "optimized" and that they install the trend micro internet security. So the next night when we picked it up I started it up in the car on the way home, it still took the 8-10 min. We turned around, went back to best buy, where the geek squad dude went and arbitraily deleted things off the system (I watched) and said "is this fast enough for ya?".
So to make a long story short, we took it home, it still wasn't right (fatal error messages and such), took it back again, argued with them for at least an hour, they wiped it out, started over, and re optimized, reinstalled trend, and ran system diagnostics on it. We picked up again and now its a little faster but still takes 3 minutes to start up, most of which is spent on a blank black or red screen. It just seems like a long time for a brand new notebook with nothing (but trend) installed on it. I could just be an idiot though, opinions please.

^___^

 

try uninstalling trend and then starting the notebook

 

What are your notebook specs?
Also, NEVER EVER trust Geek Squad

 

If you have indexing turned on for the entire drive it can take quite awhile before that process completes.


BTW, do a restore to factory specs to undo whatever Geek Squad has hosed up.

 

Thanks for the suggestions! I'll uninstall trend and see how that goes.

Intel・Core2 Duo MobileProcessor Speed1.5GHz
200gb hard drive
2gb RAM

(more info can be found here)

haha, I sorta guessed that when their solution to the fatal error messages (that they caused) was to check the box that said not to show this message again.

 

Try installing a "clean" version of Windows Vista... it definitely speeds things up!

Guide is here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=120228

 

sometime I have seen this happen when the hard drive is on its way out. Where things really start to slow down. So I would run an HDD self check from the BIOS (F10 during boot, diagnostics or tools, then primary hdd self test) run that and if it fails call and get a new hdd. You can also try to do a recovery from the recovery partion (easier than clean install, but in the long run clean install better).

 

why am i not surprised?

 

A friend of mind is having this same issue on his DV62000 where it takes 3 - 4 minutes to boot, staying on a black screen after the Windows screen, but only when on battery power. When on A/C it boots in about 30 seconds. Any thoughts on why battery would be so much longer?

 

Power management. Usually, Vista throttles processing power when the laptop is on a battery. You can change this by going to Power Options.

 

Thanks! I will have him look at that.