Windows XP Startup Delay

[Maillard55]

Hey Everyone:

Recently installed Windows SP2, a new mobo (Asus K8N-E Deluxe), new graphics card (Geforce 6800 GT), and new CPU (Athlon 64 3400+). Everything works well, but one annoying problem: my computer delays at the "Windows is starting up..." screen before it gets to the log-ins. Delay meaning about 45 seconds or so. It never did this before, and I have nothing really running in the startup menu, so I'm wondering what the heck it is looking for. Any advice? It eventually gets going, but the delay is annoying. I got this upgrade so everything would run FASTER! Alas, my wife thinks I'm an ***** for upgrading now. Any help would be appreciated so I can tell her it was all worth it.

 

[Liquidlen]

Tell your wife to chill and you too, what's a few seconds , as long as everything is working.
If you are really bugged .You can run a bootlog and investigate, or run msconfig and turn off running programs one at a time to see which one is slowing down the Boot process.
SP2 also adds some security items one could be the windows firewall ,If you use a different one turn that off.

 

[olefarte]

You could also run Bootvis, and it might at least tell you what's loading and what 's slowing you down. It can also speed things up a little, if you run it to optimize startup. I don't have time to look up a link now, but you can do a search for it.

 

[Electrick Gypsy]

Run msconfig
Select the tab BOOT.INI
Change the timeout setting to a lower value.
3 seconds is the minimum.

 

[Maillard55]

Yeah, that is something I always do. Nothing doing. It seems to be a deeper problem within the OS.

 

[Liquidlen]

If no applications are slowing boot up ,then you need to confirm drivers are up to date for different components. Also you might want to check 'services" that start automatically.These can show minor errors in the system Event log.

 

[Electrick Gypsy]

You could also run Bootvis.

http://www.majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=664

Run it.
Select Trace then Optimize System



Also check out the graphs. They'll let you see what's actually taking so long during boot.

 

[blaacksheep]

If you're using a network card (or onboard nic) and it's configured to await a DHCP server assigned IP address and you're not connected to a DHCP server, then the system will pause about 30-45 seconds until it times-out. If you aren't networked to another machine that uses DHCP or a router, you may want to assign an address to your nic - 192.168.0.2 is usually a good place to start. :slurp:

 

[Hanto]

Blaaacksheep is correct. Most of the time that this particular delay has affected me, it has been due to the networking.

Don't remember ever hearing of the Bootvis program, I will be looking that up.

Thanks

 

[popuppope]

hey guys,

I've also been having problems with delayed startup. It seems half of the processes load then there's a pause for about 1 minute before the rest of them load -very frustrating.

I want to try the whole DHCP server / assigning an address to my nic etc but I don't have a clue what these things are or how to do it.

Could someone be so kind as to talk me through it. I'm not completely computer illiterate, just not big on the whole network thing.

Thanks

 

[olefarte]

I want to try the whole DHCP server / assigning an address to my nic etc but I don't have a clue what these things are or how to do it.

Could someone be so kind as to talk me through it.

Go to Start/Run/, and type "cmd", enter, then "ipconfig", enter, without the quotes. That should tell you what you need to enter.

Then go to Control Panel/Network Connections/Properties(right click on your connection)/ then highlight "internet portocol (TCP/IP)"and then click properties. There you can check, "use the following ip address" and enter the info from the info from ipconfig.

If it doesn't work or you have any problems, just go back and check to obtain ip address automatically.

Hope this helps.

 

[popuppope]

Many thanks for that olefarte, however my internet connection stopped working so I had to revert back to optaining the ip address automatically.

Am I destined to live with a computer that takes 5 minutes from startup to being usable?!

Any further advice will be greatly appreciated.

 

[olefarte]

popuppope, try it one more time and in the box that you entered the numbers in, look right below it and check "use the following DNS server address", and enter the same number as your "default gateway", in the preferred DNS server box. As before, if it doesn't work, you can always revert back to automatic.

 

[blaacksheep]

hey guys,

I've also been having problems with delayed startup. It seems half of the processes load then there's a pause for about 1 minute before the rest of them load -very frustrating.

I want to try the whole DHCP server / assigning an address to my nic etc but I don't have a clue what these things are or how to do it.

Could someone be so kind as to talk me through it. I'm not completely computer illiterate, just not big on the whole network thing.

Thanks

Are you using a modem to connect to the internet, or broadband through your network card? My original comment about assigning your network card an address was for the case where there is a network card installed, but not in use.