Very slow start up problems from switching on!

[madon37s]

Hi everyone

 

I am hoping someone will be able to help me in my plight! I have a Windows XP professional with 2GB of ram, over 100 GB of free space on my hard drive.

 

My problem is that very recently when I switch my computer on at the wall and then press the on button on the computer tower it takes almost half an hour to then load the login screen! I have had this computer over a year now and it has never done this before as it has always loaded the login screen within just a couple of minutes. I have tried defragmenting the hard drive, restoring the computer to a date before all this started happening and cleaning the hard drive discs of umwanted files etc.

 

It still does the same thing every time I switch the computer on although sometimes if I switch it off again and then switch it back on the computer will then get to the login screen a lot quicker.

 

I have not changed anything on the computer or installed any new program to have any effect so I really am at a loss as to why this has suddenly started happening.

 

Please be aware that your replies will need to be put in to laymans terms as I am not very computer literate, I do however would like to thank you all in advance for any help that you may give me in resolving my very annoying problem.

 

Many thanks and kind regards

 

Paul

[Jelly Bean]

Hello Paul and welcome.

 

Ok lets start you off with a few things to check.

 

Firstly restart your computer and on the post screen it should say "Press ? to enter setup" ? could be Del,F1,F2 or another.

 

Press the key it tells you to and once in Setup/BIOS load defaults,it will show you what key to press to load defaults in BIOS.

 

While in setup located boot tab and make sure it is set to Hard drive as first,CD/DVD roms as the second and if you have more than one rom drive make the second one third boot.

 

Now save and exit.

 

Now is that a faster startup?

 

Click start/open run box/type in msconfig and hit ok.

 

Under start up tab uncheck things not required for startup but do not uncheck essential windows processes.

 

This will be items like MSN,Yahoo,windows media player,print driver,items such as these can be unchecked.Then hit apply and restart your computer.

 

Is that any faster?

 

Ok now another thing to try is:

 

Click start/right click on my computer and choose properties/hard ware tab/device manager.

 

Right click on items listed there and choose update driver.

 

Now are you running any faster than you were?

[madon37s]

Hi Jelly Bean,

 

I would just like to say a massive thank you for your help on my problem as it has rectified it. It now starts up as quick as it used to.

 

It is strange though how a computer can be working ok one minute and then not the next! I did have to change the priorities in the boot tab also.

 

Many thanks again and kind regards

 

Paul

[Jelly Bean]

That is excellent.

 

Some time computers can be a little buggy or even a bad shut down can change boot orders.Like a hicup in the BIOS.I do not think we know why these changes are made realy.But something happens and oops something goes wrong.

 

But hey your up and running again and that is great.

[madon37s]

Well, it was going alright for a while there but know guess what! It's doing the same damn thing it was before. When I switch the computer on after being off all night say it just will not boot up again, sometimes it does but only after over half an hour! This morning it took an hour of nothing so I switched it off and then on again and it started up straight away. I getting rather frustrated with this though because I have had the computer over a year now and it never did this until a few weeks ago.

 

I have re-checked the bios on start up and that is as I had corrected it on instructions from Jelly Bean.

 

Any more help with my problamatic computer would be very much appreciated.

 

Kind regards

 

Paul

Edited November 24, 2009 by madon37s

[RandyL]

madon this could be a hardware issue. A failing hard drive or even a faulty cd/dvd drive can cause boot slow downs.

 

It could also be a virus or other form of malware.

 

What malware protection do you have? What is your make of computer?

 

One other thing catches my eye and that is you have XP but it seems your computer is only a bit over a year old. Computers have not shipped with XP for some time now.

 

So if you could please give us some info on antivirus software and system specs like make/model/number we may have more to go on.

 

If this is a malware issue we have a fantastic expert looking in on the malware section posts.

[madon37s]

Protection wise I have AVG 8.5, I don't know the make of computer is because it was made up for me at a computer fair because I did not want vista at all! I do have a proper and licensed copy of windows XP, version 2002 sevice pack 3 (professional edition) I do have the windows firewall operative aswell as updates and virus protection.

 

The computer has an Intel Pentium Dual CPU at 2 GB of RAM

 

I think it has at least 80 GB of hardrive space (to be honest I am that crap with computers I don't even know where to look to find out how much there is)

 

I dont know what else you would need so please just tell me exactly what your after and I will then try and found out for you. many thanks Paul

[danzil]

hi

have you checked your hard drive for faults.

go to start>run> type in "cmd" (no quotes) then in the dos box type in.

chkdsk /f /r

this will require a restart.restart your PC then it will run a test on your hard drive.

please post back the results.

 

also defragment your hard drive.

start>all progs>accessories>system tools>disk defragmenter>defragment.

 

see what happens after that.

also when you went into msconfig did you notice anything programmes that you, do not know.

if so please note them down for us..(in the startup tab of msconfig).

regards

danzil

[madon37s]

Hi Danzil

 

Done disk check and the "volume is clean"

 

Have already done defrgment

 

Some of the programs I don't know of are Skytel, RTHDCPL and ALCMTR. although they do have windows/current version next to them so I am guessing they are fairly important

 

Cheers, Paul

[TJolly]

Hi,

 

Download and install CCleaner from here:

 

CCleaner - Home

 

The software is free to use. Once installed do not make any changes to the default settings. Click 'run cleaner'.

 

Let us know how you get on.

[coop]

Hello Paul and welcome.

 

Ok lets start you off with a few things to check.

 

Firstly restart your computer and on the post screen it should say "Press ? to enter setup" ? could be Del,F1,F2 or another.

 

Press the key it tells you to and once in Setup/BIOS load defaults,it will show you what key to press to load defaults in BIOS.

 

While in setup located boot tab and make sure it is set to Hard drive as first,CD/DVD roms as the second and if you have more than one rom drive make the second one third boot.

 

Now save and exit.

 

Now is that a faster startup?

 

Click start/open run box/type in msconfig and hit ok.

 

Under start up tab uncheck things not required for startup but do not uncheck essential windows processes.

 

This will be items like MSN,Yahoo,windows media player,print driver,items such as these can be unchecked.Then hit apply and restart your computer.

 

Is that any faster?

 

Ok now another thing to try is:

 

Click start/right click on my computer and choose properties/hard ware tab/device manager.

 

Right click on items listed there and choose update driver.

 

Now are you running any faster than you were?

Hi,

I am trying to find a solution to my slow start up problems, I have tried to find msconfig through the run option in XP but windows throws up an error message to say that it can't find it, how can this be ?

 

Kind Regards

Newbie Coop

[Jelly Bean]

Madon

 

RTHDCPL:rthdcpl.exe is a process belonging to the Realtek HD Audio Control Panel and is bundled alongside Realtek sound cards and audio hardware. "This program is a non-essential process, but should not be terminated unless suspected to be causing problems.\r"

 

ALCMTR:alcmtr.exe is a process installed alongside Realtek AC97 audio hardware and provides a monitoring service. "This program is a non-essential process, but should not be terminated unless suspected to be causing problems.

 

skytel.exe:skytel.exe is a Realtek Voice Manager from Realtek Semiconductor Corp. belonging to Realtek Voice Manager This is usually associated with Realtek Audio drivers

 

Coop could you possibly have malware?I sugest you visit our security section and be checked.