Slow Startup

pkeno

Is anybody here running windows 2000 pro? If so, roughly how long does it take to startup?
My PC takes between 2:30 to 3mins to start, is that a bit long?

Heres what msconfig says is starting :

sistray
mobsync
UsrPrmpt
rundll32 nvclock
SOUNDMAN
ccApp
UrlLstCk
SNDMon
gcasServ
jusched
NvCpl
nwiz
NvMcTray
qttask
internet

Are all of the above necessary?

BTW my specs are
3.06ghz P4 (Northwood socket 478)
512Mb RAM (pc2100)

Any help much appreciated!

homerjay2005

the only one you need is the norton(ccApp), turn the rest off.i dont know what some iof them are, but google them(i couldnt be a***d at the moment!)
test with them all off also, see if norton is causing this. 2mins 30 is decent enough for a unit that prob 5 years old, but you wont know until there all turned off. if you ahve another firewall on there, this could cause a problem, so testing with all start ups turned off, could solve the issue

8T8

2:30-3 mins is not a good time for a machine with a 3Ghz P4 with 512MB though the speed of the HD does come into play as well here.

Well you don't need qttask for certain that just Apples Quicktime I would be suspicious about that "internet" reference as well, as for Norton that program is a resource hog I would remove it personally and use something else like Avast or AVG Anti-virus which are better programs (free too) and don’t bog down the system like Norton does.

Next do a full system scan for spyware update your MS anti spyware to the latest version if you haven’t [now called Windows Defender].

Do a defrag of the hard drive as well and then try bootvis and see if you get any gains from it as it will analyse the driver loading sequence and optimize it.

Their is not much else that can be pruned from the list of programs you mention that is unless you want to lose the ability to alter the settings of your hardware as most of those are related to the sound, graphics & chipset.

pkeno

I typed all the processes into google, that "internet" one was a worm of some sort so I removed it. I installed bootvis but get the following messege when I try to run it:
"The procedure entry point WmiOpenTraceWithCursor could not be located in the dynamic link library ADVAPI32.dll".
Could the problem be that the program was designed for Windows XP?

Macker

Get a good reg cleaner ,I think CCleaner has one built in

http://www.ccleaner.com/

8T8

pkeno wrote:

I typed all the processes into google, that "internet" one was a worm of some sort so I removed it. I installed bootvis but get the following messege when I try to run it:
"The procedure entry point WmiOpenTraceWithCursor could not be located in the dynamic link library ADVAPI32.dll".
Could the problem be that the program was designed for Windows XP?

Sorry yeah I forgot you have Win2k it was meant for WinXP.

If you have Avast anti virus installed I would also schedule a boot time scan where it will scan the system before the OS loads this will hopefully catch anything else that might be on the system.

I would stay away from "registry cleaners" they can often do more harm then good see here for more information but this quote sums it up nicely;

Invalid entries refer to reg entries to apps that no longer exist (for the most part), and since they are no longer called upon, the entries are dead and won't affect performance whatsoever. The registry is a Db, and as such if the entry is not queried (because the executable whose settings were stored there is no longer in existance) then those entries will simply be inert. No interaction, no slowing down the system, no nothing, nil, zilch, rien, nada.

pkeno

Thanks for all the replies.

I'm seriously considering deleting Norton, this is not the first time I have heard it uses a lot of system resources. Do AVG or Avast have an internet security program incorporated into them (something like Norton Internet Security)?

Karoma

pkeno wrote:

Thanks for all the replies.

I'm seriously considering deleting Norton, this is not the first time I have heard it uses a lot of system resources.

Do. You should notice a considerable improvement.

Do AVG or Avast have an internet security program incorporated into them (something like Norton Internet Security)?

No. There are free firewalls available, which many would argue and considerably better than NIS' firewall.

8T8

You can use the free version of Zonealarm it does a good job as a firewall and is light on resources as well. There are a few other decent firewalls out their as well but ZA is about the most common.

pkeno

After a bit of searching on the internet I think i'll download AVGfor anti-virus, Ewido for worms/trojans and Kerio firewall. I already have Adaware SE and Microsoft anti-spyware for that side of things.

Thanks again to everybody for your help

Karoma

I've never bothered with MS anti-spyware... I'd personally recommend that you check out Spybot S&D too.

Lump

The MS anti spyware was rubbish when I had it installed. Spybot and adaware FTW

John

Macker

8T8 wrote:

Sorry yeah I forgot you have Win2k it was meant for WinXP.

If you have Avast anti virus installed I would also schedule a boot time scan where it will scan the system before the OS loads this will hopefully catch anything else that might be on the system.

I would stay away from "registry cleaners" they can often do more harm then good see here for more information but this quote sums it up nicely;

Don't agree ,he was asking about slow start up not performance

Skud

watch out for ccleaner, great program but last time I installed a fresh version it started installing yahoom toolbar, that always gets/attracts spyware.

L31mr0d

Had a similar problem on my computer. Now it could of been a number of things that where happening all at the same time (i.e. failing PSU, a boot virus i had and severe defragmentation)

How big is your drive? Is it over the 127GB limit for 2000?
Also you might consider getting diskeeper professional. Just google it, you get a 30 day trial when you register, but its well worth it. You'll only need to use it once to sort out the majority of your problems now. If you system is NTFS and not FAT its excellent for performance gains.

A BIG problem i was having was that my MFT (i.e. Master File Table) was severely fragmented. This usually happens when you have more files then the OS has allocated space to reference them, so you get file records being written all over the place, instead of being on the inner circle of your disk platter which is read the fastest at boot. Get Diskeeper, increase your MFT for your drive to the recommended or above size (you'll be surprised how little space 2000 has reserved. Remember people had 10GB HDDs when it came out) then run a boot time operation to defragment your MFT and move all the fragmented records back into the platters inner circle. Let me know if this helps.

Also diskeeper has a utility called I-FAAST, great for determining which files you access the most and moving them closer to the inside of the disk.

Let me know if this helps

8T8

Macker wrote:

Don't agree ,he was asking about slow start up not performance

I would say the two are intrinsically linked but the registry ( & redundant entries) has little to no impact on either of those factors bar the items that are told to load at startup in the registry (which you can observe/disable from MS config or Hijack This) it seems his system had some viruses which were in part the probable source of the slow boot time.

Ponster

Try this tool. It can show you exactly takes time when you boot up your system.

http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/file_description/0,fid,22895,00.asp


Boot Log Analyzer

Identify Windows 9.x boot-up problems with this utility. Boot Log Analyzer looks at your BOOTLOG.TXT file and calculates the time taken to load each driver, in order to help in locating any cause of lengthy boot-up times. The displayed result can be sorted by loading duration, filtered to show only those items with long durations or which reported failure, and saved to a text file.

pkeno

Hmmm maybe my hard drives are the problem. I have one 40Gb(about 2 years old) and a 10Gb(4-5 years old from another computer). The OS is on the newer drive. I don't know off hand what the specs of them are. They are both pretty full, in fact I think the 10Gb one only has a few hundred Mb of free space left.

Also I noticed that one is NTFS and and the other is Fat 32. I'm not sure which is which(I can't check now, i'm in college) but will find out tonight. Should they both have the same file system?

L31mr0d

No they don't need to. But it does cause problems moving large amounts of files from one drive to the other. The fact your drive is full is more than likely causing performance issues.

Run diskeeper and see what happens.

pkeno

I'll download diskeeper and see what happens.
Is it true that you need 15% free disk space to carry out a defragmentation? I read that somewhere(or maybe I made it up, i'm not too sure!).
A while ago I attempted to defrag the 40Gb drive(the windows disk defrag program recommended I did so) but it wouldn't work for some reason. I left it on all night and the next morning no progress had been made.
Anyway i'll get back on it when I'm home tonight.
Thanks guys

8T8

Check out Raxco's Perfectdisk HD defrag as well. You can fill in any old bogus details on that page but you will need a real email address to get the evaluation key.

peepsbates

Karoma wrote:

I've never bothered with MS anti-spyware... I'd personally recommend that you check out Spybot S&D too.

have to agree with karoma here;)