Can anyone tell me some tricks to speed up my boot time casue now it takes like 5 minutes.

This post has been edited by microscopic^earthling: Oct 23 2005, 12:37 PM

5 Minutes? I seriously hope you're exaggarating, man. I've seen Windows XP load on a Pentium-I system with only 32MB, and it took about 3-4 minutes. Yes, I know Windows XP requires 64MB RAM minimum, but that's only at the installation phase. After that, you're on your own, but it's not pretty.

So tell me more about your hardware and the operating system you're using. I mean unless they're as old as KFC, there must be something terribly wrong with them. But anyway, maybe we can work something out.

No actually i am not exaggarating, i am runing Win XP service pack 2 with a 256MB stick of ram, i plan to buy a 1Gig one next month. but since like two months ago it has taken about forever to start up.

SP2 slows things down a good bit, but 5 minutes is pretty ridiculous. Do you have a boot virus scan or scandisk type program running? Try disabling those. Also, search around for a registry fix that makes WinXP log you in automatically, that saves a few seconds. Scan for spyware and also use msconfig to see what programs are running on startup, those slow you down. Other than that, try defragging you hard drive and just generally tuning up your PC.

retaining is right. it used to take mine a while to load up until i stopped some programs from loading on startup it booted a bit quicker.

the 256mb does make a difference as well as your antivirus and firewall. I used to use norton anitvirus and compared with the entivirus i use now, norton took forever and slowed down boot up noticeably. so in all reality there are a lot of factors, but your best bet is msconfig and checking for viruses and spyware.. and that extra gig of ram will help

Thanks guys i shut down some programs that load on start up like Yahoo, and msn, and a few others, so maybe it will help.

gamerchick may be right about your antivirus software. I worked on one computer that had either Norton or Mcaffee on it, and it started nearly as slowly as yours. Once I got rid of that, the whole computer operated much quicker.

Here's another tip: try starting your computer in safe mode. It will not load all the unnecessary programs that normally start up when you turn on your computer. This might help you diagnose the problem.

Well i took off Yahoo and MSN Messenger from auto starting at startup and a few other progtams, i did a disk defrag and a full virus scan. and it is loading a little faster but still like 3 mins.

I don't know whether it works on such slow machines, but you can change the prefetch parameter in regedit. It realy helpes a lot on my system (the green bar on get 3/4 of the length instead of passing 3 times )

open regedit (run>regedit)
go to:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\PrefetchParameters

and change the key 'EnablePrefetcher' to 5.

What exactly does the prefetcher do, Wutske? I've seen the folder "prefetch" during my many ventures into the systems folders, but I've always just assumed it had something to do with the Internet.