[grandpa]

Hi

I am running WinXP home with SP2, 1.8ghz, 224mb RAM, The time it takes to get to the desktop with all 7 icons loaded is extremely long, approx 4 / 5 minutes. It loads quite quickly thru to the blue Welcome to Windows screen then take a long time to load form there. It takes approx 1/2 minutes just for the few desktop icons to load.

I have run Ewido, spybot, adware, trojanhunter, ccleaner, registry mechanic Cleanup, but with very little difference.

Can someone offer some suggestions as to how I can get Windows to load at an acceptable pace. ( Could I have a hardware prob)

Many thanks

Grandpa

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I'm guessing you have unseen processes loading as well as your 7 icons. Try Mike Lin's StartUpCPL to eliminate anything from loading that isn't necessary at start up.
http://www.mlin.net/StartupCPL.shtml

Your system is a little light on memory for XP. If you feel the overall performance of the comp could be improved, adding more memory would be the easiest, least expensive hardware change.

Johanna

[Johanna]

I'm guessing you have unseen processes loading as well as your 7 icons. Try Mike Lin's StartUpCPL to eliminate anything from loading that isn't necessary at start up.
http://www.mlin.net/StartupCPL.shtml

Your system is a little light on memory for XP. If you feel the overall performance of the comp could be improved, adding more memory would be the easiest, least expensive hardware change.

Johanna

[dagger]

yes, adding more RAM will surely help. Also something missing in the list o things u've done is a defrag, run chkdsk and defrag, it will help to get rid of the lag during desktop icons loading.
You might also consider deleting ur prefetch to improve the boot, this is a debated issue though.

[grandpa]

Hi Guys,

Many thanks we'll try your helpful hints and report back.

Cheers

Grandpa

[bofh]

agree with dagger, probably down to file fragmentation, but i would invest in more memory as a priority. there an old application called bootvis, bootvis is a defragger that focuses on filles needed by during the boot cycle. you'll have to google it as i'm new here and dont know what the admins are like about posting links, its not hard to find though

oh, and if you do run chdsk , remeber to use the /f switch so it actually fixes any problems it finds