Windows XP Home SP3 booting slow, but runs fast once booted

Interesting effect … as soon as I reinstalled Norton System Works, the boot time was cut in half, thereby returning to a time frame that is much closer to what it used to be like. I am now also running Speed Disk (from the Norton Utilities component of NSW) since that one seems to be a lot more efficient than the on-board defrag utility of XP.

Maybe you have notable number of “ghost” devices (USB flash drive, game or IR device or other external USB device) which have been loaded in the past, but were not uninstalled with Device Manager before you physically remove them when replacing with a new one or removing them permanently.

I took the steps described at the URL you provided and removed various entries of old external drives and/or USB sticks I no longer have or use. This seemed to result in a few seconds shorter boot time, though nothing of the magnitude the re-installation of Norton System Works caused.

Previously, Symantec's support had wiped out all Norton products with the Norton Removal Tool (NRT) when I encountered some problems with the initial installation of NIS 2010. Maybe NRT wasn't quite as good as they wanted me to believe at properly and completely removing all Norton products from the system …

I see that your Windows tried to and did not load Floppy drivers at boot time.

1. Do you have Floppy disk at all?
2. What is your settings in BIOS for Boot Order and Boot Up Floppy Seek?
3. Do you have items Floppy disk drive and Floppy disk controllers in Device Manager?

I migrated all my apps and data from my previous laptop (a Toshiba Satellite) to this one with the help of PC Mover.

This laptop does not have a floppy drive, whereas the old Toshiba has one. Looks like additional cleanup would be in order to weed out more of the remnants of that migration way back.

Hi Don't Spam Me… Your event logs look much cleaner now. No more errors with disks. No more failed services.

No more problems with NIS are seen in there and that is great because, quite honestly, any Norton product would be the first thing I would point my finger at if I ever had to guess as to the cause of just about any problem, especially performance related.

However, there are a couple of things, and one in particular that still could be a cause of delay on startup. Please tell me what printers you actually have, and please tell me if you ever had a Samsung device, like a printer. There is a driver trying to load that is failing called NCPro, and it appears to be related to a samsung device. There are also errors about driver issues with your printers, inparticular the brother.

The other thing still causing issues, but not sure if it is relevant or not, is your intel pro wireless networking software.

Can you refresh my memory and tell me if you posted a link to a PCPitStop test somewhere in this thread? If not, lets get one of those too.

How to run PCPitStop's Overdrive tests:

• Please click here to go to the PCPitStop Overdrive sign-up page: Signup at PCPitStop (You need to use Internet Explorer with this test so that an ActiveX control can be installed.)
• Click "Create a free account"
• Enter in your relevant information on the sign-up page. You must sign-up in order to have your results recorded so that we can take a look at them here.
• After signing up you'll see the "Registration Complete" page, and you can click "Test Your System Now" to return to the test page.
• Login with your newly created e-mail address and password on the left hand side.
• Follow the directions to "Scan this system now." An activeX control will need to be installed. It is safe, and you should allow it to be installed.
• Once the tests have been run, you will see an "Almost there" page requesting further information about your computer and your experience with PCPitStop, just scroll down to the bottom and click "GO."
• A test results page will display, and I need the link to that page.
• Look in the address bar of your browser. It will look like 'http://www.pcpitstop.com/betapit/…' Please copy and paste that here to the forum.
  
  Note: PCPitStop may recommend that you use certain utilities to fix problems on your computer. At WhatTheTech, the help we provide is free. We do not endorse or recommend the use of any products PCPitStop may suggest. Instead, we prefer to help you with each issue manually without using possible pay to use programs.

I apologize if the instructions above are obsolete. I think they changed the system a bit, and I probably need to revise my instructions. Hopefully you can get there though.

Hi Don't Spam Me… Your event logs look much cleaner now. No more errors with disks. No more failed services.

Hi appleoddity … thanks for digging through them.

any Norton product would be the first thing I would point my finger at if I ever had to guess as to the cause of just about any problem, especially performance related.

I used to feel the same way about them, but kept on testing each new version anyway. With NIS 2009 they already made a lot of improvements, finally redesigning and fully integrating the whole suite which previously was a bunch of separate components acquired from different sources and just bunched together under a joint/common interface. With 2010 they further reduced the footprint, as witnessed by Process Explorer and also based on overall subjective experience.

Please tell me what printers you actually have,

Just a Brother MFC 465CN

and please tell me if you ever had a Samsung device, like a printer. There is a driver trying to load that is failing called NCPro, and it appears to be related to a samsung device.

I have a Samsung SyncMaster 275Tplus monitor; the NCPro software/driver presumably adjusts its color profile etc.

There are also errors about driver issues with your printers, inparticular the brother.

I thought I had the most recent drivers and software for my Brother installed. But now come to think of it, there might be a couple of "dead" entries under Printers and Faxes when I was playing around with network printing vs. USB printing. Thanks for the kind reminder.

The other thing still causing issues, but not sure if it is relevant or not, is your intel pro wireless networking software.

While I am at my home office, I keep the wireless network turned off and work through a wired Ethernet connection. The only time I activate the wireless network is when I am lugging the laptop around.

Can you refresh my memory and tell me if you posted a link to a PCPitStop test somewhere in this thread?

I posted a PCPitStop link early on in this thread, but think it wouldn't hurt if I generated a new one either later tonight once I am done with the assignment I am working on right now or otherwise tomorrow morning.

I posted a PCPitStop link early on in this thread, but think it wouldn't hurt if I generated a new one either later tonight once I am done with the assignment I am working on right now or otherwise tomorrow morning.

Finally got around to generating a new PCPitStop report.

I had generated another one prior to that, but noticed that ComboFix apparently had reset the setting for restore points to go once again use a portion of all external drives, too. Readjusted those settings and also used my old version of PC PitStop Optimize to set an optimized TCP window again.

Used Defraggler to defrag the C: drive and am contemplating whether Perfect Disk would be able to provide even better results. Just a week or so ago, I had let Norton's Speed Disk from Norton SystemWorks 2005 do the defragging. But SystemWorks has been discontinued and the new version of Norton Utilities does not include Speed Disk anymore. Are there any other defragmenters you could recommend?

Honestly, I don't use any defraggers. The benefits achieved from defragging can be highly overrated in my opinion. Its so low on my list of performance options that I rarely ever consider it an option when fixing computers at my professional service company. I only consider it on extremely old computers with little hard drives. I doubt there are many people out there that could tell me they could perceive any noticeable difference at all after defragging their hard drives, yet some people are absolutely obsessed with the process. It creates un-needed wear and tear on the hard drive. For most people, defragging the hard drive would be something to do "just because," about once a year, if that, in my opinion. Again, these are my opinions based on years of experience. I can make computers run like new and they've never required a defrag to do that. So, if you want to defrag, I see no problem with the built in windows defragger unless you are absolutely set on defragging maybe a few more files than you could've anyways, which is what the big software companies are hoping you'll believe so they can make money. Anyways, now that I'm done ranting about defrag, I did take a look at your PCPitStop tests and there isn't anything that really stands out. I do notice that, in my opinion (theres those words again), you are running too many programs on your computer that are negatively impacting your system performance. Although, I would probably have a tough time convincing you of that because they are programs like: Norton SpeedDisk, Ghost, Norton Ghost Tray, Bonjour Service, Java™ Quick Starter Service, Sync, PerfectDisk 10, Java™ Platform SE Auto Updater 2 0, HD Tune, Norton Utilities, QOELoader Application, privoxy.exe, Fax Service, Norton Recycle Bin, Secunia Personal Software Inspector, Skype, and Miranda IM. The programs, especially the "paid for," programs, that claim to miraculously speed up your computer or make it run better in one way or another are often the same ones that are slowing your computer down and causing problems. How is your computer's startup time right now, lets stay focused on that for now in this thread? If needed we can take a look at one more thing, I can make some suggestions, and if you are happy with the results you can choose to keep them or leave them.

Honestly, I don't use any defraggers. The benefits achieved from defragging can be highly overrated in my opinion.

Thanks for sharing your input on that.

I did take a look at your PCPitStop tests and there isn't anything that really stands out. I do notice that, in my opinion (theres those words again), you are running too many programs on your computer that are negatively impacting your system performance. Although, I would probably have a tough time convincing you of that because they are programs like: Norton SpeedDisk, Ghost, Norton Ghost Tray, Bonjour Service, Java™ Quick Starter Service, Sync, PerfectDisk 10, Java™ Platform SE Auto Updater 2 0, HD Tune, Norton Utilities, QOELoader Application, privoxy.exe, Fax Service, Norton Recycle Bin, Secunia Personal Software Inspector, Skype, and Miranda IM.

I'll take a critical look at them and eliminate some more.

How is your computer's startup time right now, lets stay focused on that for now in this thread?

Much better. I'm still puzzled that there was this big improvement in startup time (to get to the login prompt) once I reinstalled Norton System Works. Mind you, this was right after installing it and rebooting, without having run any component of it. As I said, this might have to do with the fact that Symantec had used the Norton Removal Tool to wipe all Norton products from the system (without properly uninstalling them first) when the initial install of Norton Internet Security encountered some problems. My suspicion is that NRT simply did not do a good job at properly removing all bits and pieces of the application(s) thereby contributing to the long startup time with some timeout(s).

If needed we can take a look at one more thing, I can make some suggestions, and if you are happy with the results you can choose to keep them or leave them.

I am always open to suggestions … go ahead

Don't Spam Me

You have 4TB, running and testing many programs and have 121100 pagefile fragments. That are signs of rich PC activity. Running the defrag utility? – that is not a question at all. The question is how often.

Microsoft Support
Analyzing and defragmenting disks can help to preserve the performance and general operation of the system.

Windows XP Bible by Alan Simpson
page 316
As time goes by and you add and delete files, your hard disk can become fragmented. When you create a new file, Windows fills the available holes. If the new file is larger than a given hole, it might actually fill several holes. The holes might be spread around different portions of the disk, causing the drive head that reads the file to jump around in order to read the entire file. The result is slower performance. If your hard disk is noisy enough, you can actually hear the drive head jumping around the disk.
To get things working smoothly again, you can defragment the disk. Doing so puts all the files into nice, contiguous sections of the disk that the drive head can read smoothly without jumping all over the place.
page 326
Disk Defragmenter can keep a hard disk running at top speed by rearranging files into smooth, contiguous blocks on the disk.

Tips for Increasing Performance - Seagate HDD manufacturer
The drive's partition can become fragmented in the course of normal usage. Running the defrag utility in Windows can often improve the performance of a slow drive by consolidating scattered files and data, making it easier to access more quickly.

HP recommendation
Disk Defragmenter consolidates fragmented files and folders on your computer's hard disk then rearranges them to increase available space. As a result, your computer works with the hard drive faster and more efficiently. HP recommends defragmenting your hard drive at least once a month.

Conclusion
What the Tech
Disk Defragmentation can be routinely run once monthly or every few months.

I prefer Diskeeper

On a 3 GB XP system, I'd normally not expect the page file to be used during bootup, given the ample amount of memory available. Post #41

Microsoft® Windows® Internals, Fourth Edition: Microsoft Windows Server™ 2003, Windows XP, and Windows 2000 By Mark E. Russinovich, David A. Solomon
Page Fault Handling
When the system boots, the Session Manager process reads the list of page files to open by examining the registry value HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\ Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\PagingFiles. This multistring registry value contains the name, minimum size, and maximum size of each paging file.
The fact that the paging files are open explains why the built-in defragmentation tool cannot defragment the paging file while the system is up. To defragment your paging file, use the freeware Pagedefrag tool from http://www.sysinternals.com. It uses the same approach as other third-party defragmentation tools—it runs its defragmentation process early in the boot process before the page files are opened by the Session Manager.

ArTech I don't think there is any question here about what defrag does and why it offers performance benefits. The question is what progam should be used to perform that procedure, of which I can not answer because I rarely ever defrag, and when I do I use the provided windows defragger. Why? Because despite the technical benefits of defragging the hard drive, the way the vast majority of users use their hard drives there will be no noticeable benefit of doing so. Hard drives are far too large, too fast, and used too little to gain any significant benefit from defragging that is worth all the wasted time and wear and tear on the drive. Unless you are counting microseconds. Are there some drives that need to be defragged? Sure. And, the benefits of such are determined by the size, speed, and useage of the disk. A small, slow hard drive will obviously benefit from defrag much more than a modern drive because it will most likely be operated at near full capacity with many files added and deleted. Maybe that will explain better why I make some of the claims that I do. Again though, I challenge anyone to provide concrete numbers showing the improvement under a wide range of conditions using defrag. A significant number of people respond to sugar pills simply because they think it is helping them. Don't spam me, I agree that something was messed up with Norton. I would propose that if you uninstalled norton system works properly your system might even start running better yet. Most of what I named in my list above would offer a benefit to your computer if it was disabled from running all the time.

• Norton SpeedDisk Gone, together with the rest of Norton System Works; keeping my fingers crossed that this clean uninstall will fare better than the NRT did.
• Ghost, Norton Ghost Tray To the best of my knowledge needed for automatic backup via Ghost
• Bonjour Service I'm under the impression that this one is needed for automatically detecting when my iPhone is connected and initiating the sync process (I know, I know, I'm just too lazy to start iTunes by myself…
• Java™ Quick Starter Service Ooops, forgot to disable this entry again after the last Java update
• PerfectDisk 10 Deleted that one, was just an eval anyway
• Java™ Platform SE Auto Updater 2 0 Disabled that one since Secunia PSI is providing me with a heads up on updates already
• HD Tune Helps me to keep an eye on the laptop's internal temperature; got burned a couple of times by cooling fans that stopped working and led to an overheating of the CPU
• Norton Utilities Gone; the new ones are only of limited use; omitting Speed Disk and Norton Disk Doctor from the Norton Utilities strikes me as a bad joke
• QOELoader Application CA AntiSpam (formerly Qurb, hence the Q as in Qurb Outlook Express Loader); wouldn't want to live without it, unless I find a cheaper and equally good spam filter somewhere else
• privoxy.exe An additional line of defense against certain annoyances.
• Fax Service I thought I had disabled that one
• Norton Recycle Bin Gone. Was part of SystemWorks
• Secunia Personal Software Inspector Helps me stay on top of essential updates
• Skype and Miranda IMTrying to stay connected and/or be available (Miranda already has a far smaller footprint than all the other IMs it replaces (AOL Instant Messenger, Yahoo Instant Messenger, ICQ, Jabber, Windows Live Messenger, etc.)

Once I am done with the cleanup, I'll perform a couple more boots to see how the system fares.

Don't Spam Me
I’ll give you some suggestion for cleaning later. Now, apologize that your Topic is got new conference dimension.

Appleoddity

I use the provided windows defragger… A significant number of people respond to sugar pills simply because they think it is helping them.

Windows defragger (from about 2001) is quite OK, but I personaly like modern sugar pills from 2010.
also
Microsoft experts are improved defragmentation first in Vista (added the capability to schedule defragmentation) and now in Windows 7 – you do not need to do anything! Defragmentation is scheduled to automatically run periodically and in the background with minimal impact to foreground activity. Obviously they have had a reason.

Hard drives are far too large, too fast, and used too little to gain any significant benefit from defragging that is worth all the wasted time and wear and tear on the drive. Unless you are counting microseconds… Again though, I challenge anyone to provide concrete numbers showing the improvement under a wide range of conditions using defrag.

Too fast and microseconds!? Read/write times from and to a hard disk are measured in milliseconds (typically, 2-5 ms) – which sounds quite fast until compared to a 2GHz CPU that can compute data in less than 10 nanoseconds. In short, fast CPUs are relatively idle, waiting for data to do work on. Significant research in Computer Science has focused on improving overall system I/O performance and try to minimize the number of times a disk read or write request is issued. I have no lab. tools and ambition to provide concrete numbers but think that every 1000 microseconds (milliseconds) is important.

Bonus defrag benefit. Hard drive is a mechanical device. Less movement of mechanical parts the longer lifetime.

I have to add my support to appleoddity's thoughts on defrag. It's definitely a "feel good" operation. If you don't believe me, do some empirical testing. Go for several moths without defragging. Then do several stopwatch timed boots from power on to full desktop. Defrag Repeat power on boot timings. You will not see any significant difference. By significant, I mean more than a second or two. I've done this several times so this is not guess work.

It's definitely a "feel good" operation.

I agree but with opposite meaning.

Average user can’t “feel” significant difference after several months without defragging, specially at boot time, but we talk about defragging effect after booting also. The same, no significant difference. Is it so?

I don’t know what is motive more than 8.000.000 people who downloaded SmartDefrag and more than 5.600.000 who downloaded Auslogics Disk Defrag only from Download.cnet.com, but my motive isn’t feeling.

Movement of HDD mechanical parts take time (“rotational time” taken for the disk platter to rotate in order to get the right portion of the disk positioned under the disk head and the “seek time” taken by the head to move so that it is positioned to be able to read/write the targeted track). Each time an I/O is issued by the CPU, multiple software and hardware components have to do work to satisfy the request. This contributes toward increased latency, i.e., the amount of time until the request is satisfied. This latency is often directly felt (experienced) by users when reading data and leads to increased user frustration if expectations are not met. If you are advanced user with rich every day PC activity, you must think about that. HDD mechanical parts have lifetime also.

Experts say: performance gap between CPU and HDD has only been increasing… HDD speed over the past 2 decades are almost the same… new technology: solid-state media…

When Mark Russinovich say “Paging and Registry file fragmentation can be one of the leading causes of performance degradation related to file fragmentation in a system” that isn’t feeling for me.

Don't Spam Me Just a few words if you don’t mind. Ironically, Norton SystemWorks promotes … keeps your computer healthy, running at peak performance and faster PC startup … Your PC is faster without it. Personally don’t like complex PC System Utilities software, but respect awarded brand name (I use only Ghost and it works perfect). There are on the market better System Utylities software, but the question is why the same program work unlike on different PCs and why you (somebody) have problem and other have not with it? However, is it conclusion so simple - Norton is guilty? Think that Norton is not so important. An example: you have run Norton Speed Disk as component of Norton Utilities, Norton Utilities as component of Norton System Works, and PerfectDisk at the same time (please correct me if I am wrong, because my English is no so well, and there are so many Posts). As I know PerfectDisc can stop defrag utility of XP, but you had so many similar programs at the same time, which optimize very important system files (MFT, PageFile, open files and metadata). Collision, interaction? Maybe you harm Norton first? What is really important. 1. Don’t run too many programs on your computer that are negatively impacting your system performance – agree with Appleoddity. 2. Now you have to carefully cleanup remnants of removed programs and remnants from migration you have done with PC Mover (you have suspicious drivers, Floppy drivers are example). 3. You can use excellent Sandboxie program (I use it) for testing software, internet browsing…