Vista slow boot, act to blame?

[mattyfez]

Hi all, my cold boot time has degraded from about 40 seconds to well over a minute.

It's clean according to avg, ccleaner, malwarebytes and spybot.

It's about as light weight as I can get it, only startup apps are logitech mouse, graphics and antivirus, system drive is about 75% full but defraged. There's nothing untoward running that I can see, although my desktop is a bit if a mess with lots of large media files.

The only thing I can think of is avg, I've used it for years but I have read its a bit of a start up hog these days, and avira might be a better option.

Any ideas? Thanks.

 

[mattyfez]

Well Vista is probably to blame.

Its a dinosaur in terms of O.S agility and being light on its feet.

I use AVG on my computer and I dont find it to be slow.

I had vista once upon a time, and its bad.

Not very helpfull!

I've never had issue to be fair, and cannot justify upgrading.

It's a reasonably new install as I managed to wreck it with tinkering, but other than that I can't fault it.

 

[mattyfez]

Thanks for the replies, it's fine once its up and running, quick as you like, it's just the initial boot up...

It seems to whip through POST/BIOS etc and then slows at the windows splash screen/loading bar.
... I remember it used to be impressivley quick, I suppose it could be one of the newer windows updates causing it (I hope not).

Only firewall is windows built in jobbie.

Im gonna get rid of AVG, just as a matter of elimination more than anything as I have heard from a few sources its latest itteration has been about as well recived as a dose of the clap, due to resource overheads.

One other possibility is a windows repair as in chdsk/r etc. as I have noticed, maybe one in ten boots it will freeze at the windows loading bar screen, the loading bar remains empty, and slightly ghosted and it just hangs. it then requires a reset and then it boots.

 

[mattyfez]

Try uncluttering your pc's for one.

Less programs running similtaneosly = faster boot.

msconfig, and turn useless start up items off.

Defrag thos hdd.... and Im not talking about Win7, Vista isa resource hog, no denying that.

One of the worst O.S in history along with Windows ME.

I am also just trying to help.....

Allright in light of trying to be more helpful, have you upgraded the O.S to sp1?

Thanks for the help, no offence but this isn't a debate about the pros and cons of vista
It runs absolutley fine on a well specced m
Machine.

Hard drive is a wd 640, all the other questions are answered in my first post. But thanks anyway! Pc spec is in my signature for reference.

 

[mattyfez]

Thats true this isnt a debate about the prosand cons of Vista.

But you asked the question why is my PC so slow to boot.

I gave you the answer. Vista.

Again not very helpful! I've have loosly timed it from cold boot to fully functional desktop, and it used to be about 33 seconds, its more like 120 now.

Edit: I have a guest account enabled which I could get rid of, other than that it's just my/administration account.. can't see. That would be the issue though?

 

[mattyfez]

Thanks, Yeh i've done msconfig and all the usual suspects, avg, ccleaner, malwarebytes and spybot.

Not got round to anything else yet, ill time it tonight, and then remove avg and guest account and compare.

Good tip thanks I will look at hdd diagnostics... is it fairly quick to use or do you need to run it for weeks for monitoring? Last time I ran hdd. Checking software and few years ago and it required extensive monitoring time to be accurate..

 

[mattyfez]

Thanks, Yeh i've done msconfig and all the usual suspects, avg, ccleaner, malwarebytes and spybot.

Not got round to anything else yet, ill time it tonight, and then remove avg and guest account and compare.

Good tip thanks I will look at hdd diagnostics... is it fairly quick to use or do you need to run it for weeks for monitoring? Last time I ran hdd. Checking software and few years ago and it required extensive monitoring time to be accurate..

 

[mattyfez]

Ok, phase 1 complete,

I timed with a stopwatch on my phone from a cold boot:

Bear in mind I've already msconfiged it and run avg, ccleaner, malwarebytes and spybot, all clean.

Test 1.
Boot time from off, untill firefox has opened my google homepage:
2 mins 8 secs

Test 2.
As above, removed guest account, disable UAC, remove AVG, found nero updater in services- disabled that also.
1 min 34 secs

 

[mattyfez]

Thanks for the advice so far, we are getting there I think...

Ok, phase 1 complete,

I timed with a stopwatch on my phone from a cold boot:

Bear in mind I've already msconfiged it and run avg, ccleaner, malwarebytes and spybot, all clean.

Test 1.
Boot time from off, untill firefox has opened my google homepage:
2 mins 8 secs

Test 2.
As above, removed guest account, disable UAC, remove AVG, found nero updater in services- disabled that also.
1 min 34 secs

Picked up a few tweek from LSEdwards link...

Test 3.
As above,
Enabled enhanced SATA performance
Disabled application experience, linktracking client, offline files, and TCP/IP netbios helper.
Set 4 core boot rather than the default 1 core.
And installed Avast which I guessed would add to the boot time..
1 min 32 secs

Well first reboot after intalling new AV and all the tinkering took a bit longer but to be expected, so I rebooted and retested after the OS had chance to 'settle down' as it were.

HDD health check passed ok, although the drive does 'chirp' a little during the early stages of booting.

I will look into exactly what to do with UAC today at some point, Ive just turned it off in WCP, so im not 100% sure if is off, or on silent or whatever...

Farily happy with results so far!

EDIT: just to answer other points raised... I run as light weight as I can, so no plugins or Steam, or google desktop or anything like that, apart from standard microsoft services, the only startup things are litteraly AV, Nvidia drivers and Logitek mouse software.