System very slow after boot

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Another question rather than a reply – I’m going bonkers! I just tried WhatInStartup b/c I’m having a terrible time with the first hour or half hour of the computer starting. It’s not the boot up time, but what goes on after that. (Tried Soluto to show the boot up time – it’s a couple of minutes.) For the first period of time, as I mentioned, everything is really slow, then it’s fine the rest of the day (except to see at times the unresponsive script notice!). The WhatInStartup confirms that only 2 things are running then, but should one of them be AVG? Besides what is built in to XP, AVG is a virus checker. I use Spybot, but disabled tea timer – too slow, and run Spybot or Malewarebytes after using the computer, but they don’t run while it’s in use. Any ideas?

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Question for you, Doctor. This is the issue I’m desperately dealing with b/c of a slow start. In your list in blue letters, I know I can disable task scheduler (have heard it’s a big user), but are those other items some that can also be disabled in the services list? Thanks to all who help us beginner/intermediate types.

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Question for you, Doctor. This is the issue I’m desperately dealing with b/c of a slow start. In your list in blue letters, I know I can disable task scheduler (have heard it’s a big user), but are those other items some that can also be disabled in the services list? Thanks to all who help us beginner/intermediate types.

Disabling sevices can be a tricky thing, Newton’s third law definitely applies here;

This is the best site that I know of for looking over services and deciding which to place on the disable list.
BlackViper: Windows XP x86 (32-bit) Service Pack 3 Service Configurations
BlackViper: Windows 7 Service Configurations

Why can’t I use msconfig to change my services?
The reason is because with msconfig and Hardware Profiles, you can disable services that may be vital to boot your system. With the management console (services.msc) you cannot. Also, msconfig, while unchecking the box, is disabling the service.

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Please tell us more about the system. What are your hardware specifications – CPU, RAM, Disk size, disk used or free.

Joe

--Joe

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Please tell us more about the system. What are your hardware specifications – CPU, RAM, Disk size, disk used or free.

Joe

I’ll have to look later,Joe, I’m using a different computer today. Bong, it’s been a while since defrag; will try that. Robert, I do the same with Windows updates, but I’ll check on Adobe. I have noticed in task manager, that the service that checks for Windows updates is a huge “hog” every time, even when there are no updates to download. I won’t mess with that one though. I’ll check Black Viper, Clint.

Thanks to all.

PS I’m Annie, don’t know why the other name is showing?

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I’ll have to look later,Joe, I’m using a different computer today. Bong, it’s been a while since defrag; will try that. Robert, I do the same with Windows updates, but I’ll check on Adobe. I have noticed in task manager, that the service that checks for Windows updates is a huge “hog” every time, even when there are no updates to download. I won’t mess with that one though. I’ll check Black Viper, Clint.

Thanks to all.

PS I’m Annie, don’t know why the other name is showing?

a run of ccleaner, deleting all temps regularly, degrag of system, uninstalling stuff that you rarely use, a good AV not resource hog, disabling all running application in the background that you really dont need, all those stuffs helps aside from upgrading your hardware installed. 🙂

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Please tell us more about the system. What are your hardware specifications – CPU, RAM, Disk size, disk used or free.

Joe

Here’s what I see with Belarc. (Hope I’m doing this correctly.) 1.20 gigahertz Intel Celeron; 504 MB installed memory; 41 G disk with 29 G free. I use the computer for very basic browsing and email.

I recently added AdAware, with Ad Watch Live; used to have an old AdAware that wouldn’t update. AVG is running, not just doing on demand scans. Are these two in conflict?

Thanks again

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Here’s what I see with Belarc. (Hope I’m doing this correctly.) 1.20 gigahertz Intel Celeron; 504 MB installed memory; 41 G disk with 29 G free. I use the computer for very basic browsing and email.

I recently added AdAware, with Ad Watch Live; used to have an old AdAware that wouldn’t update. AVG is running, not just doing on demand scans. Are these two in conflict?

Thanks again

for a system such as this i would recommend only sp2 for xp since sp3 takes a bit more amount of memory than the usual xp2 😉

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You may have several applications trying to check/download updates at startup. This can really slow down
a PC.

The 2 worst offenders are Windows and Adobe. I shut off the automatic updates for Adobe. They issue updates only about
every 3 months sh it does not need to check every day. This applies to Adobe Reader as well.

I also have my windows update set to only notify me when updates are available but not download. This allows me to
manage updates when it is convenient for me.

Hope this helps.

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Another question rather than a reply – I’m going bonkers! I just tried WhatInStartup b/c I’m having a terrible time with the first hour or half hour of the computer starting. It’s not the boot up time, but what goes on after that. (Tried Soluto to show the boot up time – it’s a couple of minutes.) For the first period of time, as I mentioned, everything is really slow, then it’s fine the rest of the day (except to see at times the unresponsive script notice!). The WhatInStartup confirms that only 2 things are running then, but should one of them be AVG? Besides what is built in to XP, AVG is a virus checker. I use Spybot, but disabled tea timer – too slow, and run Spybot or Malewarebytes after using the computer, but they don’t run while it’s in use. Any ideas?

when was the last time you did defrag?

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Hi Annie, good to see you’ve regained your old persona ^^

If you’re running a fully-updated XP, ie. SP3, 500MB of RAM on a Celery 1.2 it’s always going to struggle; if you can afford to, upgrade to 1GB or more.

Your free space on the hard drive is fine, no slowdowns should be directly related to that, provided it’s defragged monthly or so. And almost nothing in Startup but it crawls after loading to the Desktop? Control Panel > Task Scheduler, what jobs are enabled there?

What Internet connection do you have, do you know what speed it usually is?

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Try turning off Windows Indexing. See:
Speed up XP by turning off Indexing

This will slow down Windows search which I would replace with:
Everything Search Engine

Jerry

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Annie —

If this is a recent development, I’d guess you’re dealing with the problem (I had it also, running XP SP3 w/512KB RAM) described in this thread.

The problem is caused by a recent update, which changed the way Microsoft Update runs. The (temporary, anyway) solution seems to be to switch from Microsoft Update to Windows Update as the default.

Also see here.

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This is part of a post in an unrelated thread …..

Here is the part of the post that may apply here ….

Sluggish XP sp3’s in the August time frame

XP sp3
Ram of less than 512

behavior is that when they check in with MU that the machine is sluggish
to unusable.
Symptom is that the box is sucking more RAM on wuauclt.exe service

Right now the only workaround is to flip the box back to WU

Go into the control panel, windows update, change settings, scroll down,
change (TEMPORARILY) back to Windows update until we figure out what’s
going on.

Got emails into WU folks and opened up a security case to get it
investigated. Think it started occuring pre August patches but it’s
really painful now. Holler if you are seeing similar.

” I am a LAN administrator and have been dealing with this issue the
last couple of weeks. What a pain.

I have had many of my XP machine with SP3 have the same problem. What I
have observed is that wuauclt.exe uses 600+ mb of memory at peak times
which turns a 512mb pc into a snail. “

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This is part of a post in an unrelated thread …..

Here is the part of the post that may apply here ….

Sluggish XP sp3’s in the August time frame

XP sp3
Ram of less than 512

behavior is that when they check in with MU that the machine is sluggish
to unusable.
Symptom is that the box is sucking more RAM on wuauclt.exe service

Right now the only workaround is to flip the box back to WU

Go into the control panel, windows update, change settings, scroll down,
change (TEMPORARILY) back to Windows update until we figure out what’s
going on.

Got emails into WU folks and opened up a security case to get it
investigated. Think it started occuring pre August patches but it’s
really painful now. Holler if you are seeing similar.

” I am a LAN administrator and have been dealing with this issue the
last couple of weeks. What a pain.

I have had many of my XP machine with SP3 have the same problem. What I
have observed is that wuauclt.exe uses 600+ mb of memory at peak times
which turns a 512mb pc into a snail. “

I think you are on to something, Tim. I had a feeling there was a change after one of the updates, and I also have seen in task manager that wuauclt is using a huge amount of memory after the boot. There has been a tremendous improvement since yesterday when I uninstalled AVG free version, however. Some have suggested Avast (rather than AVG), but on CNET there were really negative reviews of the new version 5. My detective work will continue, but you experts are awesome to help us!

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Thank you so much, all of you, for the tips. I just returned from a trip and will start working on this issue again. You all have excellent advice. One thing I did today was uninstall AVG free version, and it seems to have made a difference so far, when I restarted. Even the boot time was cut in half, although the real test is what it does after the boot, waiting for the browser to open. Will see about that later. Again, thanks to all; you guys are great!

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Hi Annie – Some folks here in the lounge like the FREE MSE for for virus, spyware, malware protection.
Microsoft Security Essentials

Minimum system requirements for Microsoft Security Essentials

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Hi Annie – Some folks here in the lounge like the FREE MSE for for virus, spyware, malware protection.
Microsoft Security Essentials

Minimum system requirements for Microsoft Security Essentials

I was checking into that yesterday, but it wants to install Windows Genuine Advantage. That might be OK, but in the WS newsletters, Susan Bradley warned about letting MS install that – apparently you can get false readings and MS tells you that you don’t have a genuine product. Do you think that’s a problem? Thanks, Tim.

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I was checking into that yesterday, but it wants to install Windows Genuine Advantage. That might be OK, but in the WS newsletters, Susan Bradley warned about letting MS install that – apparently you can get false readings and MS tells you that you don’t have a genuine product. Do you think that’s a problem?

I don’t think it is a problem as long as you do NOT have pirated software. I’ve never not installed WGA on any system for which I’ve been responsible and have never had a problem. There have been isolated reports about issues with WGA but those seemed to be when it was first released. There could still be issues but I’d rather have access to software that I want to use than worry about the small chance I’ll have to contact Microsoft to work out a software problem.

Joe

--Joe

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I don’t think it is a problem as long as you do NOT have pirated software. I’ve never not installed WGA on any system for which I’ve been responsible and have never had a problem. There have been isolated reports about issues with WGA but those seemed to be when it was first released. There could still be issues but I’d rather have access to software that I want to use than worry about the small chance I’ll have to contact Microsoft to work out a software problem.

Joe

if your OS is pirated WGA will bug you for good 😉

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if your OS is pirated WGA will bug you for good 😉

It’s not, but I don’t have the install CD, never got one. I’d be up a creek if I ever had to reinstall XP. (I’m just a beginner/intermediate user and XP is fine for the light browsing and email needs I have.)

BTW, Andy, I installed Avast the other day and really like it so far.

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It’s not, but I don’t have the install CD, never got one. I’d be up a creek if I ever had to reinstall XP. (I’m just a beginner/intermediate user and XP is fine for the light browsing and email needs I have.)

If a product installation CD was not supplied with the PC then usually there is a recovery partition on your disk drive and software supplied by the supplier to create a reinstalltion CD.

Joe

--Joe

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If a product installation CD was not supplied with the PC then usually there is a recovery partition on your disk drive and software supplied by the supplier to create a reinstalltion CD.

Joe

More often one or the other, Joe.

Check for hidden recovery partition(s) with Disk Management (right-click My Computer > Manage), if you find any, lookup how to set your PC to do a ‘Restore’ – this will be a destructive restore, all data will be lost.

Check for XP install files by searching for a folder called i386, also scrutinise your Programs list, you might find a prog installed by the maker that creates the CD(s) needed for a reinstall – be sure to have some blank CDs ready, you only get one chance to create them! If you have an i386 folder, you may be able to run a Repair install of XP directly from it – but you will need your XP key.

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It’s not, but I don’t have the install CD, never got one. I’d be up a creek if I ever had to reinstall XP. (I’m just a beginner/intermediate user and XP is fine for the light browsing and email needs I have.)

BTW, Andy, I installed Avast the other day and really like it so far.

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I was checking into that yesterday, but it wants to install Office Genuine Advantage. That might be OK, but in the WS newsletters, Susan Bradley warned about letting MS install that – apparently you can get false readings and MS tells you that you don’t have a genuine product. Do you think that’s a problem? Thanks, Tim.

I have a Dell, running Microsoft Office XP, installed from the genuine Microsoft Office disk that came with the PC.

Office Genuine Advantage came up with the (quite common, as I understand it), “false negative” on my PC. No matter how many times I “activated” Microsoft Office, I continued to get nag messages telling me I needed to activate my copy. I went back and forth with Microsoft several times (trying several ineffective “fixes”), and then Microsoft told me to completely reinstall Office.

Like many others, I chose to uninstall Office Genuine Advantage instead.

There’s no excuse for Microsoft refusing to fix this kind of glitch in their software and expecting thousands of users to completely reinstall Office (with all the attendant risks, lost settings, etc.) instead.

My $.02.

ADDED LATER: I should add that I uninstalled the OGA notifications on 10/17/09, following the instructions on this page.

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Hi Annie – Some folks here in the lounge like the FREE MSE for for virus, spyware, malware protection.
Microsoft Security Essentials

Minimum system requirements for Microsoft Security Essentials

And some people prefer to use MSE alongside Avast! 😉

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Once again, I thank all of you. I’ve done several things – already was using CCleaner, works well, did a defrag, downloaded Glary utilities (I like it), but the huge improvement came after I uninstalled AVG free. We are pretty much back to normal. I will find a new AV tool now. I don’t know what happened to AVG cause it didn’t cause a problem all the time we’ve been using it, until recent months. Wow, it sure takes a lot of time to track down these problems. Sure appreciate all the help!

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Once again, I thank all of you. I’ve done several things – already was using CCleaner, works well, did a defrag, downloaded Glary utilities (I like it), but the huge improvement came after I uninstalled AVG free. We are pretty much back to normal. I will find a new AV tool now. I don’t know what happened to AVG cause it didn’t cause a problem all the time we’ve been using it, until recent months. Wow, it sure takes a lot of time to track down these problems. Sure appreciate all the help!

Check out Virus, Spyware & Malware Protection | Microsoft Security Essentials. It is free, lightweight, easy to install, & does not bombard you with messages.

Joe

--Joe

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Clean your PC more often, use the excellent Ccleaner and don’t forget there’s Register cleaner!

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