Morning All,
My laptop computer has become increasingly slow to start up over the couple of years we have had it. I have no doubt this is due to the amount of stuff that has been installed since we got it. I have inspected the startup programs and cannot really found anything obvious that can be dumped (I think). I have a feeling that something is 'phoning home' to check for updates etc and this is taking the time.
Our desktop, that runs XP, was also suffering from very slow startup times so I downloaded and ran a nifty prog called BootVis - told me in graphical format what was taking the time to load. Sorted the problem immediately.
BootVis does not work on Vista and I cannot find amything similar. Is anyone aware of a program that will basically log the startup of Vista so i can see what is taking the time.
Cheers
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How much RAM does your system have? If less than 1.5GB then this is the first thing you need to sort out. I would also want to defrag the machine.
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1.5GB RAM is what we have.
I have to admit to being stumped by defrag on Vista - it does not seem to run when I click the button. Does it need to be run as a command line prompt?
The hard disk is partitioned into 2: the one with the programs is only 60Gb and is very full, typically 5Gb left? Could this be a contributory factor? I find that deleting all previous restore points give me back another 6Gb so do this peridoically.
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Hi Doc, pleased to meet you. I don't know what you have loaded but that's an awful lot of disk space that's used on your system disk. When I used Vista I found my pc took about 3 mins to boot and no amount of cleaning would reduce that.
May I suggest;
1. Install and run ccleaner to get rid of temp files. Be aware that it will also delete cookies so web sites which normally recognise you won't. This is easily cured as it can be trained to not delete the cookies you want.
2. Use Defraggler instead of the standard defragger. The first run will take a LONG time.
3. Before you run any defrag (and again afterwards) I recommend that you get rid of shadowcopy files. Many people complain of these eating up acres of disk space. They seem to use even more space when you interrupt a defrag, hence (2);
1) Start, Programs, Accessories, right click "Command prompt" and select "Run as adminsitrator".
2) At the command prompt, type "wmic", after some time "wmic:rootcli>" will appear
3) Type "shadowcopy", it will display a list of existing shadow copies
4) Type "shadowcopy delete"
5) one by one, it will give a "Y/N" style prompt, confirming the deletion of each individual shadow copy. Respond Y until they are all gone. Be aware that you now have NO restore points so you may want to take one manually.
Check disk space just to confirm the effect.
Good luck,
John
Last edited by: Tooslow on Fri 19 Nov 10 at 13:51
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...When I used Vista I found my pc took about 3 mins to boot and no amount of cleaning would reduce that...
My Vista laptop always took around two minutes to boot.
The OP mentions his machine has got slower over the years, but my experience - I've no expertise to offer - suggests it won't boot in much under two minutes whatever he does.
I made a mess of trying to speed up my machine, losing a few files in the process.
Unless the OP thinks there are worthwhile boot time savings to be had, it might be best to leave well alone.
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Although my next Vista pc booted much faster. Faster still when I put W7 in it's place.
He has also managed to almost fill a 60GB system disk. There could be a good few GB to be retrieved. I say that from personal experience and from research to try to resolve the question - which I did.
I would add that my main pc (W7 admittedly, though that should not be relevant) has only two programs in the startup process and my netbook only one. I don't need that one but I can't be bothered to jump through the hoops needed to get rid of it permanently, something to do with Office in XP, so I would question if the programs in start up really need to be there.
John
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I`ve mentioned this a few times before! ;-) but it does make a difference to boot-up times.
if you have spybot s/d (if you haven`t, try it!) open it in "Advanced mode" click on "tools" then "start-up menu".
Click on the Arrowed button r/h side of the information window, and a description window will open, highlight each entry in the start-up list, and read the description, any that say "user preference" read it and make your own mind up, any that come up as "typically not required" you can un-tick its check box and it wont run at startup again.
It`s amazing the amount of stuff you don`t see that is actually booting,and slowing your machine down - kill it!
p.s
if you do stop something and find that you do need it afterall. simply re-tick the box and reboot!
hth
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I've used Spybot and I hadn't spotted that. Thanks D.
John
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Thanks for all the advice.
By slow I mean it can take up to 10 minutes before it can be used. It was not like this when we got it.
I do run CCleaner nearly everyday to get rid of all the detritus that websurfing gives you.
I suspect that a good look at the HD to see exactly what is on there would be useful. We do have some fairly large programs such as Dreamweaver, Photoshop CS5 & lightroom, and some games that Junior has put on. 'My Documents' is also there but I'm sure that is not too big either.Still, hard to see how it all adds up to so much space.
We do have Spybot so I will give the advanced mode a look but I'm sure I have used the CCleaner to do something similar. Ditto Defraggler (never heard of that)
To repeat my orginal plea: is there a Vista utility or program that will enable me to either step through the start-up or log it so I can see what ios taking the time.
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I don't usually use aftermarket so can't recommend anything, what I would do is add Perfmon to your startup.
It is also available from the Task Manager Performance Tab under the Resource Monitor button, if you add it to startup then you can see what is hammering your CPU, Memory and Disk.
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>>program that will enable me to either step through the start-up<<
me haven`t actually got a vista machine to hand to check, but has it not got the same feature as previous Windows o/s? - in that if you interupt the boot-up sequence, and re-boot, you are presented with an "options" screen which offers you start up options such as:
Last good
safe mode
safe mode with networking
or the one you may find useful
Step by step confirmation
in which you can see, and allow/stop things from booting.
if you use this and find the actual culprit you could then edit your start-up list via msconfig/startup to make this change permanent.
just an idea anyway!
hth
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Vista Laptop slow to start - RattleandSmoke
