8 minute start-up

[userbits]

Hi there, just stumbled over this forum in my quest to find out why my machine is doing the same damn thing, ie, taking 8 minutes to come to life after booting to the desktop.

I've tried unticking all startups in msconfig with no change, i've run registry and hdd cleanups and defrags, all to no avail.

Safe mode it runs fine with no holdups at all.

This problem started up some months ago and once the machine gets over the initial 8 minute hang, it runs just fine, that is until I just tried to work on an old Premiere Pro project yesterday (having not used PP for quite a while) and what was previously a really smooth program that handled anything thrown at it on the timeline, on checking my system resources, it's now eating up nearly all the ram to 99% when I slide back and forth on the timeline too many times!

The cpu shows low usage, but the system starts to stutter and bog down because there's no more memory left for it to function, consequently the program and the OS starts to freeze until memory usage is reduced, which can take ages!

I was previously running 8gigs of ram and it worked fine, so I threw in 20 gigs all up to see if the memory usage was just happening only to the 8gigs, but the same thing happens and it gradually uses up ALL the memory until even with 20gigs of ram, it all comes to a halt!

I've read elsewhere and disabled Superfetch, but the memory usage still keeps happening as does the 8 min wait at the desktop.

Any ideas and are these 2 problems linked and possibly a clue as to what the 8 min problem might be.

Any help would be appreciated as this is starting to send me crazy.

 

[Madhur B]

Hi userbits,

Please login in safe mode and try to do a clean boot to check if would work, providing the link to do a clean boot for reference: How to perform a clean boot to troubleshoot a problem in Windows Vista or Windows 7

Also, scan for virus or spyware on the computer.

Run the built-in diagnostics provided by the manufacturer on the computer to check if the hardware is working fine.

Please post the results.

 

[userbits]

Hi there Madhur B, sorry for the delay, but have had family hassles and have also just changed over to a new isp and have had some networking problems to sort out.

Anyway, thanks for the heads up, I've previously done mostly what you've suggested, but I went through the clean boot in the order suggested from your link and no matter what I did, it still boots at about the 8 minute mark.

I've run Malwarbytes and it came up clean and I always run Zonealarm Extreme Security and reloaded this program fresh and ran a quick scan (after a new update), again with no change in the 8 min boot time.

So, what's your thoughts on the next step???

 

[Madhur B]

Hi userbits,

Run Microsoft fix-it for slow performance issue and check if the performance improves, here is the link for fix-it: Fix Windows system performance problems on slow Windows computers

Also, try to do SFC scannow and check if it fixes any corruption, please use the following link for detailed instructions:
http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/66978-system-files-sfc-command.html

Please post the results.

 

[Setro2]

Did you try pressing f8 on boot up and changing the settings? If no, do so. It may help.

 

[Cytherian]

Was this a sudden 8 minute lag, or was your computer taking quite a bit of time before hand and now it's just too much? Unfortunately, there are numerous factors that can slow down your start-up. Usually it's something to do with services and programs loaded at boot time. Often it can be malware or viruses. But there's also the matter of the registry becoming large. Every time you boot up, the registry has to be loaded and then examined for instructions on what to do. Software programs that claim to clean up your registry tend to screw things up, because they don't really understand it as well as Microsoft does.

If you've owned your computer for several years at this point, it might be a good time do a fresh install of Windows. I did this and found my start-up time remarkably faster. Also, rather than relying upon a recovery image that is bare-bones, I installed Macrium Reflect and then once I finished all of my "essential software" installs, I made a full backup. That way if I ever hit a wall, like this one, I could easily roll back to a fresh clean slate in a very short time, without having to reinstall everything.