Slow Startup on XP

[EKUcolonel]

Okay, so I have an HP laptop running on XP OS. Lately, it has been loading extremely slow when I reboot. I have been running Norton (I know, it's crap but my University hands it out for free and expects us to use it) and no viruses have been detected. I have been going through and trashing unnecessary programs and such and still no help. I do leave my laptop on nerarly all the time. Last time it got slow like this is crashed, but I know why. I had an IBM HD and when I sent it in for repairs, I expressly made them put in a Toshiba. It has been working fine until about a month ago. Any suggestion would be great.

 

[poertner_1274]

I know I had some problems with NTLDR slowing down my startup. I fixed this by repairing XP, but that was nearly a last resort. Anything new you have installed? problems with your internet connection?

 

[hotice]

A highly fragmented disk can be the cause for the slow loading of operating system. When the Master File Table is highly fragmented, the data required for the NTLDR to be loaded may fall outside the location accessible by BIOS and this leads to OS booting slow or not booting at all. Running a defrag regulalry helps improve system performance.

 

[Molson316]

I would do a defrag analysis to see if you need to defrag, and I would scan for spyware just in case some load of junk has been put on your PC without you knowing, hurting it's performance.

Some spyware tools include

- Spybot- Search and Destroy
- Ad-Aware
- Microsoft Antispyware (What I would recommend)