How to speed up boot up time on notebook

[5793124]

I have an IBM Thinkpad R40 notebook running XP SP3. It takes a long time for the notebook to boot up. I searched the web and found some ways that are supposed to help to speed up the boot up time, but so far nothing works. For example, I mucked with msconfig, services.msc, fonts, and so forth. Any other suggestions?


Thanks,
Brian

 

[techie131]

Have you done antivirus or spyware scans to see if that is what is causing the slow boot. Also how long is it taking to startup exactly. Do you have any kind of usb devices plugged into the thinkpad such as a flashdrive, USB Harddrive or an IPOD. I ran into a problem once where the slow boot was caused by an IPOD being plugged in during bootup.

 

[5793124]

Yes, I have run antivirus on the notebook. I do have a USB mouse plugged in at startup. I will try when I get home today with the USB mouse removed and see if that makes any difference. Thanks for your help. I will let you know.

 

[gbaughma]

Try Crap Cleaner.

http://www.ccleaner.com

It allows you to look at all of the startup options, clean up the registry, etc. etc. etc.

I use it regularly.



Just my 2¢

"What the captain doesn't realize is that we've secretly replaced his Dilithium Crystals with new Folger's Crystals."

--Greg

http://parallel.tzo.com

 

[techie131]

The USB mouse wouldn't make any difference to the startup. I meant USB device that are also storage devices but since you don't have any of devices that wouldn't be what is causing this problem. I would agree with the last posting run the CCleaner to clean up the registry and the startup options. Also you may want to download a program called Spybot to clean out any spyware you may have runnning as well.

 

[vacunita]

How much RAM does the notebook have? More RAM usually makes booting faster.


----------------------------------
Phil AKA Vacunita
----------------------------------
Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

 

[5793124]

I already ran CCleaner and Spybot. The notebook has 512 MB of memory.

 

[techie131]

What are the full specifications of your laptop such as harddrive, CPU, Memory. Also how long does it take to boot and at what point of the bootup process does it appear slow.

 

[eyec]

a noticeable deterioration in boot time indicates possible cluttered startups, fragmented HD, or nonsense background programs.

if you notice a significant slow down then do some cleanup & maintenance or even add some RAM.

however, do not begrudge AV, firewall, and other protective software slowing down your boot time.

 

[DTracy]

If your laptop is connected to a LAN or P2P with another PC, shortcuts on the desktop to off local devices (drives, printers, etc.) will cause a significant delay during startup. Each must be resolved or fail repeatedly before considered invalid.

David

 

[5793124]

The full spec. is here:

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/MIGR-58209.html

It takes about close to 5 minutes to boot up, which I think is too long.

 

[BadBigBen]

5 minutes

WAY too long...

suggestions:

1. Give the NIC card a static IP, dynamic IP's can slow down boot time...

2. in services turn the WIA service start up to deactivated or better manual (that way scanners and cameras that need this service can start it if needed)...

3. install more RAM...

4. check the IDE Primary channel (DeviceManager), and see if DMA is activated or if it is set to PIO...

if it is set to PIO, then UNINSTALL the DEVICE and REBOOT!!! XP will revert any drive back to PIO mode if it encounters 6 or more DMA errors in a ROW, this is to ensure that you can access the DATA, but it will SLOW down every disk access to the flow of molasses...



Ben

"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."

How to ask a question, when posting them to a professional forum.

 

[wahnula]

First, do the obvious and make sure your BIOS is looking at the HDD first in the boot sequence.

Five minutes is WAY too long, is most of that time spent in BIOS or POST or loading Windows (when Windows starts to load there's that graph thingy on a black screen)? Try pressing F8 during POST and getting into Safe Mode. This will load the minimum stuff possible, the very first time it might take a while but after that should be quicker.

Also, are there any network shares and is the PC a member of a Domain? Being off the Domain will cause a delay in loading.

Tony

Users helping Users...

 

[PRPhx]

As mentioned, defrag your hard drive. Then, from a command prompt, run chkdsk c:. If chkdsk finds errors, then rerun the command with the /r switch (chkdsk c: /r). After you press the neter key, you'll get a message about not being able to get an exclusive lock on the partition, do you want to run chkdsk on the next reboot. Press Y and then reboot.

What do you have in startup? Lots of programs all trying to start can slow things down. Also, I think it's been mentioned, are you trying to connect to (disconnected) shares? This will definetly slow your boot up time if your laptop cannot connect to network shares that aren't available.

 

[cdogg]

5793124,

Although 5 minutes is too long, everyone here must realize that your thinkpad is over 3 years old and probably closer to 5. That's a lot of time for a hard drive to wear, fragmentation to occur, and for junk to pile up in the registry and services list. You've got a lot working against you at the moment. Also you never told us what processor you have. For example, there's a huge difference in performance between the Pentium M and the Celeron that are listed on that webpage you linked to above.

Utilities like CCleaner, Spybot, and Disk Defragmenter are nice but can only do so much. Instead of wasting time cleaning Windows, you should reinstall it from scratch. A fresh install will make the most difference. Boot time should be cut down to under 2 minutes easy. I would also upgrade the RAM to 1GB if you can get a good deal somewhere (that will mean two sticks of 512MB since you only have two DIMM slots). The only other thing you could do that would probably show a significant improvement would be to replace the hard drive. I work with 4-year old+ laptops all the time, and I can't even begin to tell you how much of a difference that always makes in noise and speed.

Good luck!


~cdogg
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." - Einstein
[tab][navy]For posting policies, click [/navy]here.

 

[5793124]

Thank you all for your help. I think I have enough information to go forward from here.