12 Minute Boot!?!?

My brothers eMachine laptop takes a whooping 12minute to boot up! That is from the pressing of the power button until you can actually do something (ie. open firefox). Now I know his computer isn't a blazing machine (specs below) but that is waaay to long, not to mention once it is started it takes fooooorever to do anything, opening word takes at least 3-4min, the computer is unusable unless you are in safe mode.

Now, I have done all the basic checks, ran Norton (all definitions up to date), Spyboy S&D, Ccleaner, and did a defrag. Norton came up with nothing, Spybot came up with a few errors and fixed them, and Ccleaner did it's thing.

So needless to say I am left wondering what is up with his machine, does anyone have any suggestions on what to do? He doesn't have the windows recovery cd so a clean install is out of the question.

Specs:
eMachine M5405
Windows XP SP2
Processor: AMD Sempron 2800+ 1.60ghz
Ram: 512mb

 

yea i dono whats wrong but my PC has worse specs than that and it boots up in a about 1 minute....

 

have you looked at your startup programs??? it sounds to me like a bunch of crap is booting at startup and trying to run........

But that is an older system, but that's a LONG time

also, if you feel comfortable, go to Start> Run> msconfig>

This opens System Configuration. You can go to the Startup Tab and see what is booting at Startup

Click the "Selective Startup Option">

You can remove the checkmark from many background programs that just love to run and eat RAM/MEMORY

Then Reboot and let us know

 

This tells me that there are a lot of things that load up and slow down your computer, booting in safe mode you have access to only basic files and drivers and it doesn't boot up anything else.
The main thing , like nobscot6 said, is to check what programs start up when Windows is starting. Stop all the ones that aren't needed. I have about half a dozen programs that start up with my computer (my anti-virus, setpoint so that I can use the features on my mouse, a few other security programs and windows programs).
Start>Run>msconfig
Under the Startup Tab, look at what applications are starting.
I use this website to search what each program does.
This should really speed up the computer.

Also have a look at the How to Optimize a Notebook Computer by Jack O’Neill. (The first thing on the guide is to clear up the start up list).

I also want to mention that Norton is usually pretty demanding on a computer. Have you thought about another anti-virus? There are better options out there. Some free ones too, like AVG and avast! do a great job and don't slow down your system a lot.

 

AVG has been great for me, but my brother just bought Norton 2007 about 5 months ago so I doubt he will uninstall it until the subscription runs out, so I just let him be regarding that one. As far as the processes go nothing seems to be to out of the ordinary I did a quick glance at them yesterday but will take a more detailed look today he only had about 40 running, (some will probably say that is too much but considering I have about 68 running upon boot with XP SP2 as well I find that 40 is low lol, and yes I have done some tweaking but I have a few yahoo widgets running as well as object dock and all of those damn thinkvantage ones, maybe I'll have time to do a clean install over the winter break...) Anyway I will take a more detailed look and post back.

 

do you have any windows cd laying around? you should just retrive auth key off the emachine w/ 3rd party prog and reinstall windows.

 

40 not being a lot? Haha wow.
But seriously, if he's computer runs fine in safe mode (meaning the computer does start up those programs in that list) that could mean that it's one of the start-up applications that is slowing everything down.
I seriously don't see how you have so many programs..... I think more than 10 is too many.

 

It could be Norton 2007. But I would doubt that hogs RAM since it has been improved from the previous versions. Can you post a screenshot of task manager in the processes tab?

My mom's computer that has Windows 2000 with 128Mb of RAM and 750Mhz processor took at least that amount of time to boot up to a usable state. Her boot up time drastically increased when I upgraded the RAM for her to 256Mb.

 

Also, How full is your HD? Less than 5-10 GB slows down mine a lot.

 

No, unfortunately we don't have any lying around...

I check in msconfig and he has it set to selective start up with not too many things running

Yea, I will post a screen shot of the processes tab and the startup tab in msconfig once he gets home

I believe he has about 20gigs free

 

i agree that it's a startup app(s). most likely you're taking a double hit with the X apps launching at startup + a lot of apps default install setting is to phone home, check for updates and install said updates. as well, your A/V may be set to scan at boot/launch. those are the first places i'd look. if it's not something obvious, i'd just reinstall windows.

 

All you need is a 7200rpm drive, I have a similar if not slower spec'd laptop. changing to a 7200rpm drive and clean xp install made it super snappy, it now boots in less than a minute.

Im guessing it has a 4200rpm drive and that will kill any machine. trust me.

 

Check whether your hard drive has dropped into PIO mode (this can be found in the Advanced settings in the properties of the primary IDE controller (I'm assuming the drive is attached to the primary IDe controller) in XP's device manager). If it has you'll need to put it back into DMA mode

 

All good advice so far!

1). uninstall Norton. Cleaning up after the fact is a pain, but worth it. Use AVG or Avast.
2). check drive settings. Make sure it isn't in PIO mode (should be DMA).
3). Post screenshoots of the processes in taskmanager and the startup screen of MSConfig, so we can tell you what is safe to disable or shutoff.

You might want to download Startup.cpl, one of my favorite programs for disabling startups in 98/2000/XP. http://www.mlin.net/files/StartupCPL.zip

Startup.cpl will install an applet in your control panel called StartUp (who would've thought?), which shows quite a bit of info and allows simple unselecting of startup programs.

 

Thanks for all the advice guys, I haven't had a chance to check everything that has been recommend but as soon as I do I'll post back

 

I think the best possible option for the computers health and a full restoration and the best possible start up time, would be to either do a system restore to the point it first started up, or the completely re-install windows. Obviously not practical and is time consuming. Other than that all the advice here seems to be an excellent guide for a clean up

 

I would do a clean wipe of the laptop... reinstall the OS all over again... trash Norton, don't EVER use that program, it's more pain than it's worth...

Sounds like it may be doing scans during the boot process... that'll slow a machine with 512mb's or RAM, to a CRAWL

 

"Processor: AMD Sempron 2800+ 1.60ghz"

I have a friend with a desktop with a sempron processor 1.6ghz (im sure if its the same model tho), its the slowest computer i ever saw, its also a e machine

i tried fixing it for him, i disabled a whole bunch of stuff and got it to start up with less than 40 processors at one point (he still had some stuff he wouldnt let go of), needless to say, the computer virtually gained no speed. 12minutes sounds about right for his boot up. Opening an extra tab in firefox cost about a minute or so, starting firefox takes 4 minutes. I guess some computers go out...

 

its time for a reformat. worse i had is 3min boot up from my old dell p4 inspiron 8200

 

Install TUNEXP and under Memory and File System do the Ultra Fast Booting...it actually improves boot time of my pc...

another utility to try out is EASY CLEANER..works hand in hand with CrapCleaner..it will delete all temp and crap that crap cleaner didnt find..

My usual once a month routine is to run CrapCleaner -> Easy Cleaner-> Defrag HD, then run TUNE XP ultra fast booting...

 

I also use CrapCleaner and EasyCleaner. Very good tools.

 

CCleaner does an excellent job at deleting my internet history, cookies, temporary files. Don't ask why I do that though...

 

Wassup!, The exact same thing happened to me on a Toshiba Portege m500 laptop, What I did was run MSCONFIG and start messing around with the system services. What i found out was that a service called "WebClient" was the one causing the 12-minute boot so i disabled it. Hope that helps