8 minute start-up

Hi

Disabled all but the very basics in msconfig, but my system is still taking 8 minutes to start. Looking at the event log, during startup it is reporting six errors and five warnings relating to the last shutdown, and a lot of other oddities. (NB just to clarify, the four digits given at the start of each entry below are the time)

WLAN Autoconfi successfully starts, then then are no entries at all for 2 minutes until:

1833 The print spooler failed to share printer HP Deskjet 3050A J611 series (Network) with shared resource name HP Deskjet 3050A J611 series (Network). Error 2114. The printer cannot be used by others on the network.

[No further entries at all for 3 minutes after this]

1836 A timeout (30000 milliseconds) was reached while waiting for a transaction response from the Eventlog service (7011) [three separate entries]

1836 The Apple Mobile Device service failed to start due to the following error:
The service did not respond to the start or control request in a timely fashion.

1836 A timeout was reached (30000 milliseconds) while waiting for the Apple Mobile Device service to connect.

1836 The following boot-start or system-start driver(s) failed to load:
i8042prt
SAVRKBootTasks
tpcdrdrv

Finally I get:

1837 Windows has started up:
Boot Duration : 478246ms
IsDegradation : false
Incident Time (UTC) : 16/09/2012 17:29:36

Any suggestions as to why the boot is taking a total of 8 minutes, and how to fix? Unsure why Apple service is struggling, or what I can do about Eventlog time-outs.

Any help greatly appreciated, more info in my system specs. As yet, I've not tried anything other than paring down start-up options to the minimum. The start-up time seemed to suddenly get this long about a year ago, and it's consistently this long.

Thanks

Andy

Welcome Andy
Lets start at the basics and see what happens
First update your anti virus and make a full scan

OK, I've set in running - might take some time! I've used Avast! and Outpost consistently for a few years now, they automatically update, and neither has alerted me to anything previously, so I'd be surprised, but checking now - as you say, best to start at the beginning.

After 3 mins, I've completed 0% so bear with me!

Take your time. If all is negative download and do the same with malwarebytes

Well after running for nearly 3hrs, it's only done 19% of the scan, so will have to pick this up tomorrow (as it's bedtime!)

Will run Avast and Malwarebytes tomorrow and post the results

Andy

Good night Andy, I think that we will get this solved after several tests.

I think you have too many items on your computer, especially if it takes 24 hours to do an anti virus scan.

how much space do you have on your hard drive, both the total and the used amount?

Download and use ccleaner to disable your start-up options such as the Apple Mobile Device service and others.

The OP didn't indicate the hard drive size, amount of space free, and if it has been defragged. Those are important to know, as the hard drive is a common culprit for a slow computer (it is the slowest link in the chain, especially if not an SSD).

OK,

Avast full scan found nothing, Malwarebytes found 1 infected file in a game I installed years ago, long before I had the slow boot issue so this seems unconnected. After uninstalling a few old games and removing the malware, I did a restart and got start-up time down to 6 minutes. Still seems very long.

Most of the delay seems to be after the desktop appears, before I can actually use/click anything.

In response to the other queries raised:

• It's not a 'slow computer' issue overall, it runs fine when it's started up, it's simply the start-up process itself
• I have a 500GB hard drive, 465GB actual storage space, of which 42GB is free
• I use CCleaner regularly and the only startup items left outside of essential Windows services are Sidebar, ATI, printer, Google update, Kontiki host, Google Drive sync, Adobe ARM, Kernel and Hardwar abstraction layer, firewall, antivirus and Logitech setpoint for my wireless mouse
• I also have SmartDefrag installed, so whenever the system is idle it's defragging. Just analysed the drive and it's currently telling me the drive is 0.2% fragmented and there is "no need to defragment"

In my last start up (345387ms), the "Windows has started up" entry was marked critical, I got 8 warnings about the previous shutdown and a critical because the shutdown took 225213ms, but nothing about Event log timeouts this time.


Any other suggestions/tests welcomed!


Andy

First and foremost... 42Gb free on a 500Gb drive means less than 10% free. That means your defragging attempts won't accomplish much. Get a chunk of those video files off your computer, or whatever else it is that is consuming so much space. Off load them to an external drive and get to about 25% free. THEN do your defragmentation, and use Auslogics to perform it (selecting the "Optimize" option) or whatever 3rd party program you prefer. The default Windows Vista defragger is mediocre at best... fine for "simple" defragmentation of a hard drive that is in fairly good shape.


Next, when the desktop appears, a number of start up programs will be in the process of running or launching in succession. The best way to help isolate this down is to first just boot up into safe mode and see how long it takes for the desktop to become responsive. Be sure to time this, for reference purposes. If it appears to load at the pace you'd expect, then it's something to do with the software that is being loaded. You'll need to start isolating this. There is a great deal of info about optimizing a slow computer in the tutorials section.

You may have some software installed that loads "agents" or other services to make starting them faster when you go to start them. You can disable those, if that kind of optimization isn't as important to you as a faster start-up of your computer. Also, if you access services from the service control panel, you'll be able to alter how they are loaded, like "delayed start" or setting to "manual". But of course, be sure you don't do this to any system critical processes. You'll need go over the list of what you have installed and check those out. The tutorials will help you.

Cytherian said:

First and foremost... 42Gb free on a 500Gb drive means less than 10% free. That means your defragging attempts won't accomplish much. Get a chunk of those video files off your computer, or whatever else it is that is consuming so much space. Off load them to an external drive and get to about 25% free. THEN do your defragmentation, and use Auslogics to perform it (selecting the "Optimize" option) or whatever 3rd party program you prefer. The default Windows Vista defragger is mediocre at best... fine for "simple" defragmentation of a hard drive that is in fairly good shape.

Click to expand...

As stated before, I don't use the Windows defragger, I use Smart DeFrag, and I'm only 0.21% fragmented, so unsure whether defragging necessary or relevant, but will try Auslogics. Have got down to 403GB used on my 500GB drive and I have no external drive, so can't do much more at the moment.

Cytherian said:

There is a great deal of info about optimizing a slow computer in the tutorials section

Click to expand...

I will have a look through the tutorials, although as I said, it isn't a 'slow computer', it simply hangs for 3 to 6 minutes during start-up. Aside from that, there are no speed issues at all, so I think it's a specific issue or program rather than a general 'slow computer' issue. However, I'll see what the tutorials can throw up.

Thanks for the advice, much appreciated

Andy

richc46 said:

Welcome Andy
Lets start at the basics and see what happens
First update your anti virus and make a full scan

Click to expand...

So, all of that done, minor improvement. Uninstalled some crap, slightly more improvement. Start-up time logged today as 355135ms, which Event Viewer calls "critical".

Rest of today's log (after 5 warnings about delays in previous shutdown)

Event 402 (warning) This process is doing excessive disk activities and is impacting the performance of Windows. Friendly name - Windows Explorer, Blocked Time - 302ms
Event 400 (error) Information about the system performance monitoring event: Scenario - system responsiveness, Analysis Result - analysis was successful and rootcauses were found
Event 402 (warning) This process is doing excessive disk activities and is impacting the performance of Windows. Friendly name - avast! Antivirus update, Blocked time - 218ms
Event 402 (warning) This process is doing excessive disk activities and is impacting the performance of Windows. Friendly name - avast! Service, Blocked time - 193ms
Event 402 (warning) This process is doing excessive disk activities and is impacting the performance of Windows. Friendly name - Google Drive, Blocked time - 181ms
Event 400 (error) Information about the system performance monitoring event: Scenario - System Responsiveness, Analysis result - Analysis was unable to find any rootcauses

What comes next?

Andy

The next step is to remove unnecssary start up items.

Pretty lean already. Any offenders in there that might be launching all sorts of other stuff in the background? Or do I need to look at services?

I think the your next step would be to look at this tutorial and make any changes that are warranted.
http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/81176-speed-up-performance-vista.html?filter

Did you try booting up in safe mode yet?

Not had chance to do the safe mode thing yet - defrag and optimise still took around 4 hours (despite under 1% defragmentation!) which was all my time on the system last night. Getting from power on to desktop is a lot quicker since I disabled a number of background services, but there's still around a 3 minute hang-up after the desktop appears before I can use anything. Found this in the event log this morning, seems a regular. Any ideas? It happened right before the time the PC hung up

Event filter with query "SELECT * FROM __InstanceModificationEvent WITHIN 60 WHERE TargetInstance ISA "Win32_Processor" AND TargetInstance.LoadPercentage > 99" could not be reactivated in namespace "//./root/CIMV2" because of error 0x80041003. Events cannot be delivered through this filter until the problem is corrected.

Andy

Booting up in safe mode only takes a few minutes... It would be a "lean" boot, all non-essential services are left disabled. It's just a base-line to be sure there's no other culprit than one or more services loaded around start-up.

Control Panel >Network and Internet >Network and Sharing Center>Change advanced sharing settings. >Network discovery turn it off.

None of the items in your screenshot are needed at boot time except the anti virus program