Why does my Windows XP system take longer to start up?

I bought my computer about 2 years ago. Since then the start up time (Windows XP) has gone from less than 30 seconds to over 3 minutes. Part of this happened immediately after installation of the first service pack.

But what other reasons can there be? I've heard of program pre-loaders and registry cleaners...

What I really want to know is not just why start up takes longer but how I can improve the time again?

Anything that subsequent improves run time performance is a nice bonus!

Reinstate Monica - Goodbye SE

Posted 2010-07-31T22:24:07.937

Reputation: 1 237

You've misspelled Windows in your tags. – Gelatin – 2010-07-31T22:37:46.723

I run indows :) – jer.salamon – 2010-07-31T22:41:22.413

Retagged to windows. – Hello71 – 2010-08-01T00:08:40.333

@Hello71 - thanks for the correction – Reinstate Monica - Goodbye SE – 2010-08-01T12:15:17.410

Answers

Things you can do:

Check what services are running (Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Services), search for them to see what each one does and if it is important to keep it enabled.
Check what things run on startup (type msconfig into the run prompt), search for each one to see whether it is important to keep it enabled.
If it wouldn't take that long to reconfigure your computer after doing so and you want to speed it up quickly, re-install Windows.

Gelatin

Posted 2010-07-31T22:24:07.937

Reputation: 415

thanks. If I reinstall Windows, will that wipe everything or is there a "fix" option? – Reinstate Monica - Goodbye SE – 2010-08-01T12:16:02.370

Even if there is that is unlikely to speed it up, I was talking about a complete re-install which you should backup your files before doing. – Gelatin – 2010-08-01T16:16:40.190

Every "fix"-option i've seen on any OS that supports it doesn't really do a good job. I'd recommend backing up all your data and reinstalling your whole system, too. – lajuette – 2010-08-01T16:55:50.347

update - that msconfig tip was great, got rid of quite a bit of rubbish, thanks. – Reinstate Monica - Goodbye SE – 2010-08-13T20:36:11.453

If your good with computers you can look at whats running in your autoruns with the sysinternals tool.

jer.salamon

Posted 2010-07-31T22:24:07.937

Reputation: 758

If you are less good with computers you can try the anti-frustation tool Soluto which helps you do this.

Tamara Wijsman

Posted 2010-07-31T22:24:07.937

Reputation: 54 163

@Tom - wow, that looks great. I found a review of it (http://lifehacker.com/5561303/soluto-is-an-awesome-tool-to-speed-up-your-system-boot-fix-system-slowdowns) which looks good. I'll try it - thanks.

– Reinstate Monica - Goodbye SE – 2010-08-01T12:21:39.550

1@Tom (and others) - OK, I thought I'd start here seems it seems the easiest. Bad start - the "anti-frustration" site does not allow me simply to download the tool - I have to email them to get an "invite in a few days"! – Reinstate Monica - Goodbye SE – 2010-08-04T20:10:10.237

Ah, seems sad... Yeah, they are still in beta and in order to keep the feedback at a reasonable level they work with an invite system. Well, then you should go with AutoRuns as other people do mention... And if you really want to get your hands dirty you can try out XPerf from the Windows Performance toolkit, which is available in the Windows SDK. The reason BootVis is no longer supported is because Microsoft wrote XPerf, which contains the tool XBootMgr. Instead of a GUI, you will have to do things using command-line and view things with the XPerfView GUI afterwards. – Tamara Wijsman – 2010-08-05T08:23:14.087

Well, good luck with the other answers and check Soluto out once you can. :-) – Tamara Wijsman – 2010-08-05T08:23:33.307

@Tom, thanks - will do. Appreciate your help. (Sorry, don't have the rep yet to upvote your comments / answer!) – Reinstate Monica - Goodbye SE – 2010-08-08T09:08:47.387

Over a week later, Soluto have not emailed me. Looks like it will never happen. – Reinstate Monica - Goodbye SE – 2010-08-13T20:36:47.447

@Mark: They are close to releasing an Alpha version, I guess that they are the delaying the mails slightly so people get to see a way better beta version of Soluto. Time will tell... – Tamara Wijsman – 2010-08-14T09:36:21.783

@Tom - thanks again, I hope so. I'm eager to try it - it could be really good if it does what it says on the tin. – Reinstate Monica - Goodbye SE – 2010-08-16T13:34:34.843

Rather than hunt and poke for what could be causing boot performance issues, I recommend mapping out all the components that load during boot and how long each takes. Microsoft BootVis can do this for you and even provide a pretty graph to look at.

More information can be found on MSDN. Because the tool is no longer supported and hosted by Microsoft, you'll need to download this from a mirror, like Softpedia. (I can't link you due to reputation guards in place. It's a simple search on Google, though.)

After discovering what's slowing boot, you can use the aforementioned applications (e.g. Autoruns, msconfig) to disable boot time drivers, applications as needed.

Rafael Rivera

Posted 2010-07-31T22:24:07.937

Reputation: 626

@Rafeal - strange that such a useful program is no longer supported! Thnaks for the tip – Reinstate Monica - Goodbye SE – 2010-08-01T12:17:21.790

This question is quite similar to this one. Installing TuneUp Utilities and especially PageDefrag (as recommended in this answer) may help.

Reinstalling Windows is the last option. But it may bring the best effect. I recommend installing PageDefrag anyways. It really helps and it's free.

HTH

lajuette

Posted 2010-07-31T22:24:07.937

Reputation: 4 364

that certainly does help, thank you. I looked for a similar question but couldn't find it so thanks for that link. – Reinstate Monica - Goodbye SE – 2010-08-01T12:18:40.210