Vista Business takes long to boot

Hi, I have Compaq 6710b and Vista Business 32bit. Recently I noticed that it takes Vista a while to boot to logon screen. "Please wait" screen seems like freezing for some time and only after like 15-20 sec I proceed to logon screen. Also windows reported compatibility issue with fingerprint reader, which driver I obtained on HP web-site. I updated the driver thinking it was the issue but it was not.

Anyone has any ideas what can be the cause?
thanks

 

I'll tell you what I tell everyone

While your's is a little long, people are obsessed with start up speeds. Don't overly freaked out about it if it is under two minutes.

People have ton sof files on your desktop (in folders) or your profile has a ton of music / pictures / downloads. All of that stuff will add some time to a profile load.

Your antivirus and firewall and other startup programs will also add time to your system load once your desktop shows up.

Should they? Not in an ideal world...but there's a lot of things going on with these programs--they are very tightly integrated into the computer.

The one red flag is the fingerprint reader--I can tell you from experience that any driver that is not 100 percent compatible with Vista will definitely degrade startup...but, if you want to use the device and there is not an upgrade, you're stuck until they upgrade the driver.

Since the device works, it is compatible enough, but windows definitely stumbles on drivers it does not like

 

Thanks for reply gerryf19.
I understand that software causes all of that. I use VMWare workstation on my laptop and was wondering if it affects booting time as well? with all its virtual connections and stuff

 

depends on the version of vmware workstation.

I don't have vmware workstation, but in using vmware server the older versions did not, but the newer ones with the webinterface do.

The web interface is simply your browser, but in order for your browser to connect to anything, vmware server in basically installing a webserver onto your machine, which adds to load up time.

While transparent, you can see the additional processes in the process tab of task manager--something like three or four new processes. Those take time to startup

 

I just deleted VMware, it was Workstation 6 (not the latest) and welcome screen now takes 3 seconds instead of 2 minutes

 

Did workstation 6 have the web interface (i cannot recall the version of the number I used last...it's been a long time, though)

VMWARE Server 2 sure takes a heck of lot longer than Server 1 did....

 

I'm not sure about web interface but I use VMware Workstation 6.0.4 Build 93057.
I installed it back again and the problem with loading came as well. I need to find either an alternative for vmware or a newer/older version to test.

edit: I don't think this version of vmware uses web-interface, need to identify the issue then

 

I'm going to try Workstation 6.5 beta build 99530 and see how it's different from previous one.

 

There will not be any real difference between any v6--the version number indicates a significant change

Usually reads like this: version A.bb.cc

A=version number...significant change
bb=minor updates
cc=bug fixes.

version 6.1.1 and version 6.9.9 will not be all that different.

Have you considered virtal pc 2007?

Works fine for most purposes--just no snapshots. If you can live without snapshots, it will suit your needs.

 

Thanks gerryf19, I will consider trying virtal pc 2007.

I also tried vmware 6.5 beta, but still the same issue.

Thanks for your suggestion