Ever wondered why your PC takes so long to boot up? Ever consider why so many techies and geeks swear off Symantec and McAfee products? How about those seemingly traitorous thoughts you might have had sometimes about ditching Windows and jumping on to the Tux bandwagon (read Linux)...

Well, there are solutions, but this post is more to point out one man's efforts towards finding and spreading the truth about startup times of programs. That's Oli Warner of ThePCSpy.com and here's the low down on his experiments so far:

A PC with Windows XP SP2 was loaded up with some of the more common programs in use today. These programs were spread out over a wide-ranging diaspora of everyday use apps.

Security Software:

Norton Internet Security 2006
McAfee SecurityCentre
Kaspersky Internet Security 6.0.0.303
BitDefender v10

Office Software:

Microsoft Office 2003 (v11)
OpenOffice 2.0.3

Chat Software:

Windows Live Messenger 8
Yahoo Instant Messenger 8.0
AOL Instant Messenger 1.5 Preview
Trillian 3.1 Basic (with all plug-ins)
Gaim 1.5.0 (again with all plug-ins)

Codecs and Fonts:

Apple QuickTime 7.1
DivX 6.3
K-Lite Codec Pack 2.76 FULL
100 Fonts
1000 Fonts


Peer-to-Peer (P2P) Download Software:

Kazaa 3 (+included crapware)
Azureus 2.5.0.0 (+ Java Runtime)
uTorrent 1.4
BitComet 0.7


Compression Utilities:

WinRAR
WinZIP
WinAce
7-Zip


Other Applications:

Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Professional Edition
Adobe Photoshop CS2
Macromedia Studio MX 2004
VMWare Workstation 5.5.1-19
Java Runtime 1.5.0.06
.NET Framework Runtime 2.0
DirectX 9.0c


I can't really post the results because I haven't obtained his permission, but suffice it to say that Norton Internet Security was the worst offender, having added 43 seconds to the startup time of a newly installed Win XP installation. Just imagine what it'll do to the startup time after your registry gets filled with age. Terrible!

Next on the list, was the 1000 fonts that were loaded adding 30 seconds to the startup time! So, it proves what the geeks have been saying for ages - the fewer fonts there are, the quicker your load times will be.

There's a nice bar graph depicting the results and I hope the bloatware developers and Symantec can have a look at it and more importantly learn from it. Protection is useless if the user is hassled so much that he / she refuses to use it.

Good stuff..Just proves my point even more that Norton antivirus is a SHOCKING bit of software!@!!
Ive found 19 virusses on a pc that had been "Cleaned" and "checked" by a subscription account for Norton...I used AVG and amazed the IT tech at the companyI was contracting at.

I urge ALL of you - STOP USING THE NORTON VIRUS !!! cos it WILL give you a virus!!

This post has been edited by Mark420: Sep 12 2006, 06:44 AM

I have never used the Norton suite of software, so I cannot comment on it. I have, however, used McAfee Anti-Virus Professional, Firewall and related products. The software took over my entire system (figuratively speaking, of course) and dramatically slowed it down. Moreover, any small "incorrect" change or installation caused my network connections to break. It binds the network protocols to its filters.

While traveling abroad several years ago, my Internet connection suddenly stopped working. I investigated the DNS settings, the TCP/IP config, the ISP, the modem, the cable, the whatever. Since I did not have a copy of my McAfee disks, I was afraid to uninstall it and expose my unprotected computer to the Internet. After many futile and frustrating attempts, I uninstalled the McAfee software and the network connections suddenly worked. I am not your grandma on the Internet and have experience setting up different firewalls. McAfee, in my opinion, was just too bulky and unstable. I have since switched to AVG and Kerio, and am glad of this decision. My system runs much more smoothly and I haven't had a hiccup with my network connections for the past few years.

User experience may vary.

I use norton but there is no real difference between the startup times for me. I've also heard that if you have too many files in your root c: drive it can lead to slow boot times. I don't think this applies with windows xp though but it might still apply.
Also the registry is another choke point for startup, it can get pretty damn big too. Mine is about 80mb, that's 80mb full of text basically.

-HellFire

I try to run my computer as clean as possible.
We shouldn't forget (and forgive) the countless, useless, windows services that load automatically by default.
Right now I have like 75% of them completely disabled or in manual start mode.
And very few programs are worth loading on startup. Very few.

Ditto on using AVG over Norton. Friends and colleagues were amazed how AVG has an advantage over Norton. I'm sure AVG will miss things that Norton will catch, but nothing is perfect. I have used AVG for years now and only have good things to say about it

I have seen one too many times when a user has more than one antivirus or firewall program installed. This will most likely bog down the system a lot. So if you are one of these users, try to keep it to one antivirus and firewall only. Security suites in my opinion are one of the worse things created. Most are not good and only end up hogging up more system resources. I recommend using separate antivirus and firewall programs. Don't forget your antispyware programs also

All you really need to run at startup are these three programs:

antivirus
firewall
antispyware

These will keep your computer protected from hackers, viruses and other malware related infections. The rest are most likely non-essential startup programs and may be run manually to save resources.