[Xp] Boot process stops for 4 minutes then continues

I am not a newbie but I'd like to know your thoughts on the subject. Since a week startup of my laptop takes in total around 5 minutes, which includes the headline problem - it pauses doing NOTHING for 3-4 mintues.

Now, here is a weired bootvis report:


Any ideas?

 

It does do something.

Look at drivers, CPU...

But not enough to justify the delay.

You have "cleaned up" - i.e. removed temp files, defragemted the hdd??

You may try to rearrange bootfiles by defragmenting them... a fellow memeber has supplied a file for Vista - it seems to work in XP too...

 

Look at the space between 56th and 238th second. There is virtually nothing.
Also, this is not a temp or defrag problem as there is no disk activity in this period.

 

I would say that you laptop is waiting for a response from some device. I would look in the BIOS first, starting by disabling things like serial and parallel ports and moving to USB ports etc. one by one and see if that pinpoints the problem.
Good luck.
Steve

 

I don't think it will solve anything becasue, as I said, the problem started few days ago and I haven't been to BIOS since... months.

EDIT:
Well, one of those two things seemed to have done the trick:
1. Uninstalling Avira antivirus
2. Running optimalization in bootvis.

Counter-intuitively, I am inclined to bet on option no. 1.

 

I understand that you haven't been in the BIOS for a while. Still it's possible that something changed in your Windows configuration and it's waiting for a response from a device so you may want to look into it.

 

Ah, we just missed eachother

 

Ok, the problem is back and bootvis looks a bit different:


I have FireWire connection disabled (Device manager), Wired connection disconnected (no cable) and a WiFi which I use.
What do you think?

PS
There is nothing I can change within bios.

 

Do you have any mapped network drives? Do you use a VPN? Do you have a hardware switch (or even a software one) that would allow you to turn off wifi?

Gary

 

Yes. No. Yes (hardware).

 

Try unmapping the drives first. See if that helps. If not, then try turning off the wireless via the switch before you boot up.

Gary

 

You nailed it.
Is there any way to keep the mapped drive and reasonable boot time? This disk is very rarely connected to the network but it's a pain to configure it every time I need to use it.

 

None that I know of. Do you HAVE to have it as a mapped drive, or could you just have an easy link to it from Windows Explorer? (Like the one highlighted in the attached picture.) Mapped drives will cause this sort of delay if they are unavailable at boot time. The link as shown does not have this trouble.

Gary

 

Hmm, that looks usable. I will look into it, thanks!

 

Hold the Window key and and hit E, to bring up a Windows explorer window. Then in the "Network Location" section right click and select "Add a network location". There is a "View Examples" button there for the correct syntax.

Gary

 

have you fixed it yet? I would try what they are reccomending, also once you fix it, i sugest registry editing (really easy) because your computer can start up in like 5-10 seconds (with no consequences)

 

Uh huh, sure. And the check is in the mail, right?

Care to share this magic registry hack that allows for a 5 second boot time? We await your reply with baited breath.

Gary

 

what version of windows?

What about a logon script to map the drives and a logoff script to unmap the drives?

 

if you don't need a drive letter, just use the network address directly.

like

\\server\Share

 

what about this, would it work?

create a batch file and make it run on startup (which is, differently from mapping a drive, happening after your profile loads). the command would look like this:

Code:

subst X: [path]

and an example - after moving my huge media library to a new laptop, there was no easy way how to convert all file paths (thousands of them), so that i've decided to make my library think that drive H is where directory d:\Data is, by adding a bat file with this content to autorun:

Code:

@echo off
subst h: d:\Data
cls
exit

you will have a drive letter, the only difference is that it will be created after the boot, when your profile is being loaded.

 

This 'subst' command is very useful. However, if I set it and then run Total Commander without the disk connected to the network, it gets totally screwed - whenever I bring out list of disk program crashes.

 

ah.. actually i've never tried this without the path being accessible, so i didn't know about this behavior.

in that situation, i'd probably create these virtual drive letters on demand only... by the same batch file, only without adding it to the startup. it means one click more... but a bunch of clicks less than mapping the drives "properly" everytime.