Laptop takes forever to boot

J

Junglist0682

Member
Morning guy's, I've picked up my sis laptop recently and I began to clean it up a bit and at times the laptop will restart fine and boot up fine.... however, at times the boot up will take forever....

seriously will take like 10 mins just to access the desktop... any ideas what this could be?

I am tempted to format the hard drive since I am pretty sure this has never been done and the laptop is about 5 years old... it's running vista with a 32bit os + has a gig of ram...

on another note... I don't have a OS to re-install windows.....

any thoughts on what could be causing the delay on booting up?
 
Use msconfig to check the start up list, delete anything that is not actually required every time the computer starts.

Run a couple of different cleaners on it, try ccleaner and iobit toolbox portable, then give it a good full defrag with defraggler or smart defrag.
 
I have ran cc cleaner along with malware bytes and super anti spyware plus just gave it a defrag yesterday ... As for the msconfig I have reviewed it but may have to review it again
 
With regards to re-installing vista, are you sure the laptop does not have a hidden recovery partion, is most big brand laptops do.
 
Shot from the user manual of your laptop tells you how to recover using the recovery partion.
 
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so if I were to format the hard drive and once its completed... I woud just need to do as you said and I will be able to re-install vista just like that?
 
I would not risk the format, it would probably just format the c partion, but in the off chance it formats the entire drive, you would lose the factory recovery, so you would end up with a blank drive and no windows to install, just use the factory recovery and it will be good as new.
 
I'm not surprised that it is slow at all really, Vista + 512MB RAM? Upgrade the RAM to at least 2GB, then get rid off Vista and use Windows 7 (you'll have to buy it) and then maybe think about getting a faster hard drive, you're probably using a 5400 RPM drive now, get a 7200 RPM drive there will be a big difference. Or better still, buy an SSD, that will really improve your boot times, with an SSD Vista should boot in around 30 seconds, Windows 7 in around 20-25 seconds.

If you don't want to buy new hardware, reformat and reinstall Vista, or reformat and install Windows 7 (don't use the recovery partition to recover, it'll come with loads of bloatware which will make your PC so slow!), but before you do that go to the manufacture's website and download all the latest drivers (video, audio, ethernet etc etc) and save them to a USB drive so that once you've reinstalled Vista or installed Windows 7 you can easily install all the latest drivers afterwards. If the laptop has a multi-core CPU (dual- or quad-core) then you can enable multi-core booting. Just go to Run (Start > Run or press the Windows key and the R key on your keyboard at the same time), type in 'msconfig' (without quotations), click the tab at the top which is called Boot, then click on Advanced Options, put a tick in the box that says Number of Processors and then select the highest number there is. This should speed up your boot time a little bit.
 
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Another thing to try would be to download and run tdsskiller to make sure you have no mbr rootkits/bootkit infections.

Please download and run TDSSkiller

When the program opens, click on the start scan button.

TDSSKiller will now scan your computer for the TDSS infection. When the scan has finished it will display a result screen stating whether or not the infection was found on your computer. If it was found it will display a screen similar to the one below.

infection-found.jpg


To remove the infection simply click on the Continue button and TDSSKiller will attempt to clean the infection.

When it has finished cleaning the infection you will see a report stating whether or not it was successful as shown below.

scan-completed.jpg


If the log says will be cured after reboot, please reboot the system by pressing the reboot now button.

After running there will be a log that will be located at the root of your c:\ drive labeled tdsskiller with a series of numbers after it. Please open the log and copy and paste it back here.
 
Junglist0682 said:
I will more than likely format and just re-install
Click to expand...
I think that's really the best thing you can do. Vista is not the fastest OS in the world to boot but it should never be taking 10 minutes, anything over 2 minutes is probably too long. Reformat and reinstall and see if it's any better, if you use the factory restore discs you must make sure to uninstall all the junk they will have installed with Vista and then you must make sure you update the drivers. Update the video, audio, LAN/ethernet/WiFi and SATA drivers.
 
johnb35 said:
Another thing to try would be to download and run tdsskiller to make sure you have no mbr rootkits/bootkit infections.

Please download and run TDSSkiller

When the program opens, click on the start scan button.

TDSSKiller will now scan your computer for the TDSS infection. When the scan has finished it will display a result screen stating whether or not the infection was found on your computer. If it was found it will display a screen similar to the one below.

infection-found.jpg


To remove the infection simply click on the Continue button and TDSSKiller will attempt to clean the infection.

When it has finished cleaning the infection you will see a report stating whether or not it was successful as shown below.

scan-completed.jpg


If the log says will be cured after reboot, please reboot the system by pressing the reboot now button.

After running there will be a log that will be located at the root of your c:\ drive labeled tdsskiller with a series of numbers after it. Please open the log and copy and paste it back here.
Click to expand...

I had this application in my mind today as well since I first heard about it here... I just didn't recall what it was, but thank you for the posting :good:

I will reply back with the log

vistakid10 said:
I think that's really the best thing you can do. Vista is not the fastest OS in the world to boot but it should never be taking 10 minutes, anything over 2 minutes is probably too long. Reformat and reinstall and see if it's any better, if you use the factory restore discs you must make sure to uninstall all the junk they will have installed with Vista and then you must make sure you update the drivers. Update the video, audio, LAN/ethernet/WiFi and SATA drivers.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I believe this would be the best option as well... of course adding more ram would be great as well, but thank you for the replies :)
 
Scan came back clean ... oh well ... will see whet my sis would like to do ... I'm more for a windows 7, upgrade ram and perhaps look into new hd
 
Junglist0682 said:
I'm more for a windows 7, upgrade ram and perhaps look into new hd
Click to expand...
Upgrade your RAM to the max your laptop can hold (guessing it's 2x2GB to make 4GB?), then buy a new 7200 RPM HDD or an SSD (a 64GB SSD may be cheaper than a 7200 RPM HDD, and it would be faster but you'd have less space), then I'd clean install Windows 7, don't upgrade, do a fresh reformat and reinstall. :)
 
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