Slow to load up

[Legspinner]

When I turn my PC (Dell Dimension 5150C with Windows XP Home) on it takes an age to load up. I remember speaking to a MS guy once who showed me how to check what programs & applications loaded up everytime I turned on. Has anyone any idea how I can check this and/or speed up the intial load up?

 

Thanks in advance

Andy

[SS]

Several things you can try.

 

- Defrag your hard drives. Read this to show you how: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314848

 

- The above defragger cannot defrag some files, so install and run PageDefrag: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/FileAndDisk/PageDefrag.mspx

 

- If you really do want to see/edit the programs which are running on startup, then this program will be very useful: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/SystemInformation/Autoruns.mspx

 

Think about any software you installed which corresponds to roughly when the slow down occurred. I've known software which installs Services (elements which start with Windows) which can have a significant and detrimental effect on startup times.