Windows 7 slow to startup

RubyXI

Recently my laptop has been very slow to start. I recently installed updates and it seems to be since that. It used to start up in a minute or two. Now it takes over 10 minutes. It gets to the welcome screen fast enough but then takes forever to the wallpaper to show and then even longer for the icons to appear. Shutting down is fine so it seems to be a desktop/icon issue. Anyone else have this problem or know how to fix it?

asif2011

Open the command prompt and type " Chkdsk c: /r /f " It could take a while to run but you might have a little bit of filesystem corruption or maybe a few bad sectors which can cause slowness, Chkdsk will sort it out if its there... reboot, see if it still happens

EDIT: You need to run command prompt with administrative previleges, Start>All Programs>Accessories>Right click command prompt and left click on "Run As Administrator"

doncarlos

phi3 wrote: »

Recently my laptop has been very slow to start. I recently installed updates and it seems to be since that. It used to start up in a minute or two. Now it takes over 10 minutes. It gets to the welcome screen fast enough but then takes forever to the wallpaper to show and then even longer for the icons to appear. Shutting down is fine so it seems to be a desktop/icon issue. Anyone else have this problem or know how to fix it?

Two ways to remove unwanted programs from running at startup

a) Hit the windows icon. Type msconfig. Click Startup. Remove unwanted files.

download an application called ccleaner. This is far more user friendly and you can also clean-up temporary files that can also slow your PC down

wobbles-grogan

Wow. 10 mins is a long time!

What are the specs of your laptop?

You could try running the disk defragmenter, just type 'defrag' into the start search bar thing and it will show up. It might speed up your boot times.

Also, you probably have a lot of programs loading on startup, this would cause a big slowdown too. To check/fix this, type "msconfig" into the start bar. It will show there too. When you run that, you'll see a window with 5 tabs. Click on the "Startup" tab, and unselect everything you think is unimportant. Tbh, MOST things are unimportant, though you will want to leave stuff like wifi drivers and trackpad drivers on. Anything you turn off will automatically be started once you need it.

Tbh, I have never seen either of these issues cause it to spend 10 mins starting up, hence why I asked for your system specs...there might be an underlying prob with your hard drive, causing it to be very slow... (as Asif as alluded to above)

RubyXI

wobbles-grogan wrote: »

Wow. 10 mins is a long time!

What are the specs of your laptop?

You could try running the disk defragmenter, just type 'defrag' into the start search bar thing and it will show up. It might speed up your boot times.

Also, you probably have a lot of programs loading on startup, this would cause a big slowdown too. To check/fix this, type "msconfig" into the start bar. It will show there too. When you run that, you'll see a window with 5 tabs. Click on the "Startup" tab, and unselect everything you think is unimportant. Tbh, MOST things are unimportant, though you will want to leave stuff like wifi drivers and trackpad drivers on. Anything you turn off will automatically be started once you need it.

Tbh, I have never seen either of these issues cause it to spend 10 mins starting up, hence why I asked for your system specs...there might be an underlying prob with your hard drive, causing it to be very slow... (as Asif as alluded to above)

It's a dell inspiron 15 laptop. It's only new. I think it must be something to do with the new windows updates as it happened after I installed them. I'll try the things suggested by you guys when I get home.

yoyo

If it takes 10 minutes to boot I would be pointing to the hard disk on its last legs or faulty. This doesn't have to be your main disk, if there are external ones/others in the system this can happen. I would run the CheckDisk scan as suggested above and take it from there. Running a proper hard drive diagnostic scan would not hurt either though! Seatools For DOS is a good one. Just burn the iso to a blank CD-R, boot off it and run an advanced scan.

Nick

RubyXI

Hi guys, tried the stuff ye suggested and it did speed up a bit. But it was still slower than it should be. I decided to do a factory restore. It said it was backing up my files before i did it (some kind of dell back up system) So i went ahead with it. When it started up again i couldn't find where my files were saved. When I turned it on this morning it was worse than ever. A black screen comes up after the welcome screen. It was there for quite a while and i had to leave so i shut it off. If anyone can help with this I would be so grateful as i'm at my wits end. Thanks.

wobbles-grogan

You'll find out how to get your files back here:
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/Restore-files-from-a-backup

TBH, it sounds like there is something seriously wrong with your hardware.
Your best bet would be to get those files back using the above link, putting them onto an external drive (or burn em to a dvd if you dont have one) and get onto your manufacturer (dell i think...) to get a repair/replacement.

Hijpo

phi3 wrote: »

Hi guys, tried the stuff ye suggested and it did speed up a bit. But it was still slower than it should be. I decided to do a factory restore. It said it was backing up my files before i did it (some kind of dell back up system) So i went ahead with it. When it started up again i couldn't find where my files were saved. When I turned it on this morning it was worse than ever. A black screen comes up after the welcome screen. It was there for quite a while and i had to leave so i shut it off. If anyone can help with this I would be so grateful as i'm at my wits end. Thanks.

Probaby should have rolled back to a restore point before the updates were installed, would have been alot more accurate in detecting if it was the updates causing the problem. Have a look and see if your files where backed up to a folder my computer and clicking your HDD.

RubyXI

When I google black screen on startup, it seems a lot of people have had the same problem. Can the all be hardware issues? I really don't want to have to send it away to be repaired. I already broke one laptop this year.

holcus

First thing that occurs to me when I hear "slow PC" is malicious software.
Did you check for it? try some decent on-line scanner like ESET, if you can still boot to desktop that is. Otherwise try booting into a safe mode with networking.
(press F8 just after BIOS or manufacturer logo disappears when turning on your laptop)

yoyo

phi3 wrote: »

When I google black screen on startup, it seems a lot of people have had the same problem. Can the all be hardware issues? I really don't want to have to send it away to be repaired. I already broke one laptop this year.

Sounds like hard disk failure (you can replace these yourself if you don't want to send it back), run Seatools I linked to in the previous post to confirm!

Nick

RubyXI

Did a restore to a previous date. Made it a lot worse. Everything is so slow that i can't use it. Keeps coming up that windows explorer is not responding. Trying to run a malware scan that was supposed to take a few minutes but it was running all night and still not done. I couldn't run the seatools as it's too slow. Wondering if it's a windows explorer error.
If it's not sorted by saturday I'm going to have to bring it in to get it fixed which I don't want to do but I'm running out of options.
It's also installing my files from before the restore but after the night it's only 17% done so it will take forever.
Safe mode works fine.

holcus

run eset online scan from safe mode with networking. you said it was working over night, did it detect anything?

RubyXI

holcus wrote: »

run eset online scan from safe mode with networking. you said it was working over nigh, did it detect anything?

Hadn't finished when i left it this morning. But so far nothing detected. I tried to get the eset thing but it seemed to want to download antivirus sofware that was conflicting with mcafee.