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Four minute WinXP boot up

P

PSRumbagh

Flightless Bird
It takes about 4 minutes for my Compaq V2000 laptop to boot-up using WinXP
Home with SP3. NORMAL boot-up invokes 58 processes, 107 services, 489
modules, 215 drivers , 25 startup and 29 IP connections. SAFE MODE boot-up
invokes 12 processes, 107 services, 158 modules, 215 drivers, 25 startup and
0 IP connections. I am certain that many of the normal boot-up items are
loaded for programs that I scarcely use. How do I figure out which of the
normal boot up items is really needed and which are not needed? If I turn
off a truely needed program in the Start Up folder can I do damage to my PC?
 
D

db

Flightless Bird
if booting up into safe mode
is much quicker than your
normal mode,

then you might try to execute
a process called "clean boot"

it is a method to disable all
third party / non microsoft
programs and services from
booting with normal mode
windows.

afterwards, you can determine
which third party programs and
services are needed to stay
disabled.

--
db·´¯`·...¸><)))º>
DatabaseBen, Retired Professional
- Systems Analyst
- Database Developer
- Accountancy
- Veteran of the Armed Forces
- @Hotmail.com
- nntp Postologist
~ "share the nirvana" - dbZen

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>
>


"PSRumbagh" <PSRumbagh@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:C62F9562-DC07-41BA-A69A-89E03B71D26C@microsoft.com...
> It takes about 4 minutes for my Compaq V2000 laptop to boot-up using WinXP
> Home with SP3. NORMAL boot-up invokes 58 processes, 107 services, 489
> modules, 215 drivers , 25 startup and 29 IP connections. SAFE MODE boot-up
> invokes 12 processes, 107 services, 158 modules, 215 drivers, 25 startup
> and
> 0 IP connections. I am certain that many of the normal boot-up items are
> loaded for programs that I scarcely use. How do I figure out which of the
> normal boot up items is really needed and which are not needed? If I turn
> off a truely needed program in the Start Up folder can I do damage to my
> PC?
 
V

VanguardLH

Flightless Bird
PSRumbagh wrote:

> It takes about 4 minutes for my Compaq V2000 laptop to boot-up using WinXP
> Home with SP3. NORMAL boot-up invokes 58 processes, 107 services, 489
> modules, 215 drivers , 25 startup and 29 IP connections. SAFE MODE boot-up
> invokes 12 processes, 107 services, 158 modules, 215 drivers, 25 startup and
> 0 IP connections. I am certain that many of the normal boot-up items are
> loaded for programs that I scarcely use. How do I figure out which of the
> normal boot up items is really needed and which are not needed? If I turn
> off a truely needed program in the Start Up folder can I do damage to my PC?


Why does your host create any [permanent] IP connections when you startup
Windows? You have a lot of mapped drives? If so, each one times time to
renegotiate a new connection.
 
D

Don Phillipson

Flightless Bird
"PSRumbagh" <PSRumbagh@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:C62F9562-DC07-41BA-A69A-89E03B71D26C@microsoft.com...

> It takes about 4 minutes for my Compaq V2000 laptop to boot-up using WinXP
> Home with SP3. NORMAL boot-up invokes 58 processes, 107 services, 489
> modules, 215 drivers , 25 startup and 29 IP connections. SAFE MODE boot-up
> invokes 12 processes, 107 services, 158 modules, 215 drivers, 25 startup

and
> 0 IP connections. I am certain that many of the normal boot-up items are
> loaded for programs that I scarcely use. How do I figure out which of the
> normal boot up items is really needed and which are not needed? If I turn
> off a truely needed program in the Start Up folder can I do damage to my

PC?

Trial and error is the only way. So long as you have System
Restore set ON (so you can restore to yesterday's OS in case
of need) you cannot damage a PC by disabling startup routines.

The single likeliest cause of slow boot is a malware/virus scan
executed at first boot. Only you can decide whether you need
this or not.

Guidelines for tinkering:
1. Disable Windows Fast Find. (This may help users who are
so clueless about filenames they need to search within files
to identify them.)
2. Disable office suite startup routines (as for MS Office, Open
Office, Corel Office etc.) which seek to make single apps load
faster (e.g. spreadsheet) by preloading at boot some sort of
master control.
3. MSCONFIG gives you a list of TSR apps loaded at
boot. Disable Task Manager unless needed and any others
(e.g. multiple keyboards) you do not use daily.
4. Look carefully at which Windows Services (among about
120) are set ON or AUTOMATIC. You may be able to locate
those that you seldom need and switch them off.

Report results in this thread in case helpful to others.
--
Don Phillipson
Carlsbad Springs
(Ottawa, Canada)
 
J

Jose

Flightless Bird
On Jan 30, 1:55 pm, PSRumbagh <PSRumb...@discussions.microsoft.com>
wrote:
> It takes about 4 minutes for my Compaq V2000 laptop to boot-up using WinXP
> Home with SP3.  NORMAL boot-up invokes 58 processes, 107 services, 489
> modules, 215 drivers , 25 startup and 29 IP connections. SAFE MODE boot-up
> invokes 12 processes, 107 services, 158 modules, 215 drivers, 25 startup and
> 0 IP connections.  I am certain that many of the normal boot-up items are
> loaded for programs that I scarcely use.  How do I figure out which of the
> normal boot up items is really needed and which are not needed?  If I turn
> off a truely needed program in the Start Up folder can I do damage to my PC?


I would be curious to know how you came these numbers?

Trial and error is a method, but not very scientific, can be
frustrating, involves guesswork and can take a long time.

You can be the first victim of my latest copy/paste:

First perform a scan for malicious software:

Download, install, update and do a full scan with these free malware
detection programs:

Malwarebytes (MBAM): http://malwarebytes.org/
SUPERAntiSpyware: (SAS): http://www.superantispyware.com/

They can be uninstalled later if desired.

Reboot.

Since there may be some system configuration changes, you may want to
manually create a System Restore point before continuing.

Have you installed any third party malicious software tools with built
in realtime protection
such as Norton, McAfee, AVG, Spybot, ZoneAlarm, etc.? They usually
install and set themselves
up to load things automatically, check for updates, or scan your
system on every reboot. This
can take a lot of time.

If these programs have any kind of resident realtime protection
enabled you can count on that to slow
your system down.

You can choose to rethink that strategy, adjust their configuration
options or choose to live with the performance hit.

We can find out everything for sure with a program called Autoruns and
then decide what to do without using trial and
error methods. Autoruns will show you all the things you see in the
XP msconfig tool and more.

Autoruns is like the XP msconfig tool on steroids.

Autoruns installs nothing and runs on demand. It will show you things
about your system you
will not see using other tools. Autoruns is safe and will not
uninstall any applications or programs on
your system when you disable them. It just lets you control the
startup of the programs.

Download Autoruns from here:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb963902.aspx

Save Autoruns on your system and launch it. When Autoruns finishes
scanning your system, it
will say Ready in the lower left corner of the screen.

You will be looking at the Everything tab which lists every startup
item. It can be a little
intimidating to see all that stuff, so narrow things down a bit.

Click the Logon tab. Under Options, you may can choose to Hide
Microsoft and Windows Entries
so you will only see the items that do not belong to Microsoft or
Windows. Usually that means
you installed them. Be sure to Refresh (F5) when you make any
changes.

You can see the startup items for your logged in user and there are a
lot of things, but some
of the entries are not very interesting at the moment.

In the Logon tab, the entries of interest are:

The Local Machine startup items (HKLM):

HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run


The Current User startup items (HKCU):

HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run


The Startup folder for the currently logged in user. For user Jose,
that would be:

C:/Documents and Settings\Jose\Start Menu\Programs\Startup


On my system, those three items are completely empty. That may not be
practical for everybody,
but it certainly possible.

You can choose to disable startup items using Autoruns and enable them
again later if something
goes wrong.

You can also choose to delete startup items using Autoruns when you
are sure they can be safely
deleted. Leftover undeleted items will not slow your system down
since they are not loading, but
they can be annoying to look at.

Everything with a checkbox is a startup item that you can manipulate.
Every checkbox with a green
check is an enabled startup item. You can decide if you need the
startup item enabled or not
(perhaps just by looking at it) and if you are not sure what it is,
right click the item and choose
to Search Online.

Here is one place on the Internet to research individual startup
items:

http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/filedb/

If you uncheck an item it is only disabled from starting. It is not
deleted from the startup
list until you actually choose to delete it. You can always come back
and enable the item again.

Autoruns does not uninstall any programs. Any changes will take
effect the next time you reboot.

After making changes, reboot and see if you have any new issues that
you can identify as
a result of the changes or if things are better and react
appropriately.

Consider taking some notes while making your changes so you can know
how to undo things if a
problem comes up afterwards. Try not to get confused by making too
many changes at once.

Reboot your system once in a while during the adjustments to see how
things are going. You can
always make more adjustments or undo things later.

You can use this same strategy using the Autoruns Services tab. You
can look at all the Services
or just the non Microsoft services by clicking Options and choose to
hide Microsoft and Windows
Entries and refresh (F5) the list.

You will see all the extra non Microsoft services that are configured
on your system and can decide what
action to take. It is possible to have zero non Microsoft services on
some configurations.

There is an Internet site that has a lot of information about Windows
Services, what they do and
if they can be disabled here:

http://www.blackviper.com/

You can use many methods of timing the system startup before and after
times to see what the adjustments do. There is no guessing. This way
you will know with certainty if things are better or worse and not
just be thinking things are a little better, maybe better, seems a
little faster, might be faster or not really sure...
 
P

PA Bear [MS MVP]

Flightless Bird
Help! My computer is slow!
http://miekiemoes.blogspot.com/2008/02/help-my-computer-is-slow.html


PSRumbagh wrote:
> It takes about 4 minutes for my Compaq V2000 laptop to boot-up using WinXP
> Home with SP3. NORMAL boot-up invokes 58 processes, 107 services, 489
> modules, 215 drivers , 25 startup and 29 IP connections. SAFE MODE boot-up
> invokes 12 processes, 107 services, 158 modules, 215 drivers, 25 startup
> and
> 0 IP connections. I am certain that many of the normal boot-up items are
> loaded for programs that I scarcely use. How do I figure out which of the
> normal boot up items is really needed and which are not needed? If I turn
> off a truely needed program in the Start Up folder can I do damage to my
> PC?
 
K

Ken Blake, MVP

Flightless Bird
On Sat, 30 Jan 2010 10:55:01 -0800, PSRumbagh
<PSRumbagh@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote:

> It takes about 4 minutes for my Compaq V2000 laptop to boot-up using WinXP
> Home with SP3. NORMAL boot-up invokes 58 processes, 107 services, 489
> modules, 215 drivers , 25 startup and 29 IP connections. SAFE MODE boot-up
> invokes 12 processes, 107 services, 158 modules, 215 drivers, 25 startup and
> 0 IP connections. I am certain that many of the normal boot-up items are
> loaded for programs that I scarcely use. How do I figure out which of the
> normal boot up items is really needed and which are not needed? If I turn
> off a truely needed program in the Start Up folder can I do damage to my PC?




My personal view is that the attention many people pay to how long it
takes to boot is unwarranted. Assuming that the computer's speed is
otherwise satisfactory, it is not generally worth worrying about. Most
people start their computers once a day or even less frequently. In
the overall scheme of things, even a few minutes to start up isn't
very important. Personally I power on my computer when I get up in the
morning, then go get my coffee. When I come back, it's done booting. I
don't know how long it took to boot and I don't care.

However if you do want to address it, it may be because of what
programs start automatically, and you may want to stop some of them
from starting that way. On each program you don't want to start
automatically, check its Options to see if it has the choice not to
start (make sure you actually choose the option not to run it, not
just a "don't show icon" option). Many can easily and best be stopped
that way. If that doesn't work, run MSCONFIG from the Start | Run
line, and on the Startup tab, uncheck the programs you don't want to
start automatically.

However, if I were you, I wouldn't do this just for the purpose of
running the minimum number of programs. Despite what many people tell
you, you should be concerned, not with how *many* of these programs
you run, but *which*. Some of them can hurt performance severely, but
others have no effect on performance.

Don't just stop programs from running willy-nilly. What you should do
is determine what each program is, what its value is to you, and what
the cost in performance is of its running all the time. You can get
more information about these with google searches and asking about
specifics here.

Once you have that information, you can make an intelligent informed
decision about what you want to keep and what you want to get rid of.

--
Ken Blake, Microsoft MVP (Windows Desktop Experience) since 2003
Please Reply to the Newsgroup
 
V

VanguardLH

Flightless Bird
VanguardLH wrote:

> PSRumbagh wrote:
>
>> It takes about 4 minutes for my Compaq V2000 laptop to boot-up using WinXP
>> Home with SP3. NORMAL boot-up invokes 58 processes, 107 services, 489
>> modules, 215 drivers , 25 startup and 29 IP connections. SAFE MODE boot-up
>> invokes 12 processes, 107 services, 158 modules, 215 drivers, 25 startup and
>> 0 IP connections. I am certain that many of the normal boot-up items are
>> loaded for programs that I scarcely use. How do I figure out which of the
>> normal boot up items is really needed and which are not needed? If I turn
>> off a truely needed program in the Start Up folder can I do damage to my PC?

>
> Why does your host create any [permanent] IP connections when you startup
> Windows? You have a lot of mapped drives? If so, each one times time to
> renegotiate a new connection.


Also, do you really need to shutdown Windows? Why not hibernate it? That
also removes power but you boot back into the memory image you were using
before instead of having to load all the programs again.
 
J

Jose

Flightless Bird
On Jan 31, 2:34 pm, "Ken Blake, MVP"
<kbl...@this.is.an.invalid.domain> wrote:
> On Sat, 30 Jan 2010 10:55:01 -0800, PSRumbagh
>
> <PSRumb...@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote:
> > It takes about 4 minutes for my Compaq V2000 laptop to boot-up using WinXP
> > Home with SP3.  NORMAL boot-up invokes 58 processes, 107 services, 489
> > modules, 215 drivers , 25 startup and 29 IP connections. SAFE MODE boot-up
> > invokes 12 processes, 107 services, 158 modules, 215 drivers, 25 startup and
> > 0 IP connections.  I am certain that many of the normal boot-up itemsare
> > loaded for programs that I scarcely use.  How do I figure out which of the
> > normal boot up items is really needed and which are not needed?  If Iturn
> > off a truely needed program in the Start Up folder can I do damage to my PC?

>
> My personal view is that the attention many people pay to how long it
> takes to boot is unwarranted. Assuming that the computer's speed is
> otherwise satisfactory, it is not generally worth worrying about. Most
> people start their computers once a day or even less frequently. In
> the overall scheme of things, even a few minutes to start up isn't
> very important. Personally I power on my computer when I get up in the
> morning, then go get my coffee. When I come back, it's done booting. I
> don't know how long it took to boot and I don't care.
>
> However if you do want to address it, it may be because of what
> programs start automatically, and you may want to stop some of them
> from starting that way. On each program you don't want to start
> automatically, check its Options to see if it has the choice not to
> start (make sure you actually choose the option not to run it, not
> just a "don't show icon" option). Many can easily and best be stopped
> that way. If that doesn't work, run MSCONFIG from the Start | Run
> line, and on the Startup tab, uncheck the programs you don't want to
> start automatically.
>
> However, if I were you, I wouldn't do this just for the purpose of
> running the minimum number of programs. Despite what many people tell
> you, you should be concerned, not with how *many* of these programs
> you run, but *which*. Some of them can hurt performance severely, but
> others have no effect on performance.
>
> Don't just stop programs from running willy-nilly. What you should do
> is determine what each program is, what its value is to you, and what
> the cost in performance is of its running all the time. You can get
> more information about these with google searches and asking about
> specifics here.
>
> Once you have that information, you can make an intelligent informed
> decision about what you want to keep and what you want to get rid of.
>
> --
> Ken Blake, Microsoft MVP (Windows Desktop Experience) since 2003
> Please Reply to the Newsgroup


If you can get paid for analyzing a boot time from ntkrnlpa.exe to an
agreed upon definition of finished (accompanied by a log file of
actual timings) and then charge a fixed amount - say $1 - for every
second you knock off the time, it quickly gets important!

If somebody says their system takes too long to boot, please fix it, I
will first determine with certainty exactly how long is "too long" and
make the adjustments that do not compromise their intended use of the
system or their security (etc.) and will never use a trial and error
method.

It usually only takes a scant few minutes to get at least a 50%
reduction on a lot of systems once you agree on what finished booting
means. The rest is gravy.

There is no trial and error, disabling of "some programs", suggested
things to disable with no method, etc. as we often see suggested.
Figure out where every second is going and reduce it if you can. No
guessing.

I too am a hibernator, but it sometimes only takes one bad experience
to put the fear in people.
 
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