XP Pro very slow to open programs

Meridian

Meridian

Meridian

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Whenever I start a program for the first time in more than a few hours, it takes ages for the program to start up. I'm talking up to ten minutes here, and seldom less than one minute. As soon as the command (double-click on a shortcut, select from the Start menu or whatever) is complete, the HDD light goes on fixed, and stays like that. Screen activity comes to near standstill, clicking on things has little effect. However, it hasn't frozen because mouse-overs still bring up tool-tips exactly as usual.

Please note: ONLY the start is slow: once going, the programs all run just fine. If the program was used within the last hour or two and is still in cache, it loads just fine. Programs which are started automatically (like Media Player if I download an appropriate file are still covered. If a window is up during the load, I can still type in it just fine, as I am now (I just tried to open Task Mangler), but I can't change between windows. It includes rebooting, when the boot phase can take over fifteen minutes.

It doesn't help that this doesn't always happen - just mostly.


System:

Windows XP Pro SP2, fully updated

Q6600 at 450 x 8
Asus P5K-E WiFi AP
2 x 1GB OCZ PC2-8500 SLI ready
BFG 8800GTX at default
2 x 80GB Maxtor SATA-II drives in RAID 0 as the boot array (sata ports 1+2)
1 x 80GB Maxtor SATA-II drive as the data drive (port 3)
2 x Samsung DVD-RWs on SATA ports 5 and 6
Hybrid floppy/flash memory reader on the floppy port.
Soundblaster XFi Pro, but that was installed after this started happening.
BOINC runs 24/7 on all four cores, but stopping it makes no difference.


Tried so far:

Defragging. More than once, including after removing programs.
Creating a second pagefile on D:
Removing, rebooting, then recreating the pagefile on C:
(Both are fixed at 4092MB, and both still exist)
Scanning for viruses etc (and this doesn't affect running, just loading)
Latest drivers for the RAID array.
Task Manager does not show any changes, or show resources being grabbed by anything (except BOINC)

Indexing is not disabled, but is not currently running.


I've seen several people with the same problem by googling, but none of them had a fix.


Anyone got any ideas? Cheers


M
 
Last edited:
Have you tried moving everything in the "Prefetch" folder to a temp folder. The slow booting would suggest a very full prefetch folder. If that solves it then move all the files back one by one untill you find the culprit.
 
kitfit1 said:
Have you tried moving everything in the "Prefetch" folder to a temp folder. The slow booting would suggest a very full prefetch folder. If that solves it then move all the files back one by one untill you find the culprit.
Click to expand...



My understanding is that the folder is meant to be full? Up to a limit of 128 entries anyway. And anything in the prefetch loads FAR faster than stuff not in it. Having looked this idea up, it looks a lot like an idea with no basis in reality - people are just quoting it, having read about it elsewhere. But I may well give it a try.


M
 
Meridian said:
My understanding is that the folder is meant to be full? Up to a limit of 128 entries anyway. And anything in the prefetch loads FAR faster than stuff not in it. Having looked this idea up, it looks a lot like an idea with no basis in reality - people are just quoting it, having read about it elsewhere. But I may well give it a try.
Click to expand...

I was'nt quoting it from anywhere as it happens. It is just something that i have always done as soon as i have installed windows. I dissable the task scheduler in "services", then empty the prefetch folder. Start up is then blisteringly quick. Windows dos'nt suffer from doing it and all my progs still open very very fast.
 
Now done. Makes no difference at all, except now the programs which used to load fast, are a bit slower. But the stuff that used to take minutes still does.

Interestingly, if the shortcut is to start a game, I never have a slow start. Could this be some sort of borked disk checking?


M
 
After a complete rebuild, followed by another when the motherboard decided not to boot up (but is just fine in another system) I've finally found the cause of the slow program loading: the trial version of Call of Duty 4. I don't know what it does, but as soon as I loaded it in the current build (with a different motherboard, but same chipset) I got exactly the same problem. Roll back to before the install, just peachy again.

Didn't like it anyway...



M
 
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