For an unknown reason, my main computer has suddenly began to take absolutely forever (minutes, compared to seconds) to log in to an account, start up the explorer, task bar, and desktop, and begin operating normally. In fact, it only ever half-finishes loading the task bar. The desktop wallpaper appears but none of the icons do. Explorer never seems to actually finish loading. The task bar dies in a few seconds if I try to do anything.

I have tried starting it in Safe mode, at which point everything works smoothly.

However, when trying to start it normally, everything runs EXTREMELY slowly. E.g. I started up a program at the beginning of this post, a few minutes passed, and only now does it show up with the splash screen (for loading the program). The computer doesn't appear to be particularly active during this entire time.

This started today when I came home and tried to turn on and log in to my computer.

The last thing I can remember doing is downloading some ZIP files containing MP3s and 3D models and playing some video games. The last thing I installed was Avast! Antivirus. Last thing I uninstalled was Fences, a program that attached to Explorer to help organize the desktop (in hopes that doing so would fix the problem; lol2bad).

Does anyone have any ideas? I'm not eager to resort to a system restore, but if it's the easiest way, I can't be bothered too much not to do it, I guess.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on May 5 2011, 10:40 pm by Sand Wraith.

Perhaps you should back your most important things up on a flashdrive/disc now, just to be safe?

That shouldn't be necessary, as my computer tends to have a ton of system restores archived.

Start - Run - msconfig.exe. Check all of the various start up tabs and see if you can see anything that looks suspicious. Most things are normal windows services, but you should be able to google anything on the list and get at least something useful information about it.

If safe mode is running much quicker, it identicates that there is something is it not loading up, that a regular boot is, and whatever that something is is what is causing regular boot to go so slow. One of the main things that safe mode does is run default microsoft drivers for all your hardware, as well as start far fewer windows services. But I'd expect there would probably also be 3rd-party app differences when starting in safe mode as well.

He's got the right idea. Do this first. System restore is not a valid substitute, and is quite broken. You want your data completely off your HDD onto something else not on it. You may have to reboot the system, so BACK UP WORK.
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1) Run a full system scan. Maybe there is some junk in there eating your RAM.

2) Clean up your hard drive, for god's sake man. It's loading times, so you computer has too much on it. Delete/uninstall everything you don't use or have no use for.

3) Defragment. Do this AFTER you've cleaned up your HDD, it will decrease load times further.

Install CCleaner and use the startup tool, and remove everything that you don't recognize. Then, remove everything you don't want to run at startup. Note: Avast takes up an annoying amount of resources both at startup and during real-time scanning

ATM, my computer managed to get through and seems to be working. I'm not ready to restart it yet though.


Can't believe I didn't think of this before. Done. Didn't find anything bad though.
My computer can take Avast easily.



The data isn't the most important stuff on the computer; it would be a huge inconvenience, but most data isn't precious anyway (must... not... cry... over... H/jk).

1) Not sure what you mean by this.

2) I clean it as much as I can, but I really do have a lot of music, videos, games, etc. on the computer. I've asked my family do delete their own useless shit too, especially since I'm the only one using the computer anymore. However, just saying, even before this happened, my computer ran fine.

3) This is something I haven't done in a while. I'm gonna look into a good defragging program. Any suggestions? Only ones I've used are the default defrag and IObit's Smart Defrag. Found the latter to be effective. But I don't know any technicalities.

Also, why is System Restore broken?

@Lathinide: I actually did this just in case somehow CCleaner missed something. Didn't find anything again.

Amount of things on harddrive won't affect startup time. It's going to be something eating CPU cycles or maybe all your RAM (which results in eaten CPU cycles) during startup most likely.

Give me the list of things you have running on startup please, I'm kinda curious as to what's there.

Will upload to this post ASAP.

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Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on May 5 2011, 10:39 pm by Sand Wraith.

One thing you could do would be to download and install hijack this: http://free.antivirus.com/hijackthis/

It creates a detailed report of lots of registry settings, browser settings, startup programs, currently running processes etc. Reboot your computer, and as soon as possible, run hijack this on it. Then post the output on one of the (many) spyware forums, saying that you're suffering from very slow system boot up times, and your most recent history of installations/etc. You say that you don't think there is spyware installed, but just want to be sure, and ask if anyone can identify what might be causing your slow boot times.

Yeah, run msconfig like Lanthanide said. Maybe the startup settings got changed and the amount of RAM to use was lowered?

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on May 5 2011, 10:41 pm by Dem0nS1ayer.

First I'd try to uninstall Avast!. It might not be heavy on your computer normally, but it might conflict with something else. Virus scanners are prone to that. Then uninstall every other program since your last reboot. Keep in mind that pressing the power button (when on) on some systems only suspends the computer and doesn't count as reboot.

If you also haven't found suspicious programs with msconfig then I suggest a system restore. Oftentimes it doesn't help but sometimes it does, so it's worth a try. It won't delete your data, just possibly programs, their settings and registry keys. Worst case is you have to reinstall a driver update or program. On top of thats it's easy and fast to do, so it's your best bet for suddenly appearing mysterious problems.

While the advice is good, the explanation is wrong. Todays computers have enough RAM so that a single program won't bring your computer down to what feels like a halt.
But it's still a good idea to scan for malware.

It's good advice for maintaining an operational system but in this case it can't be the source of the problem because fragmentation happens over time. Usually so slowly that you don't even notice it.

Also your title is misleading a decrease in start up time is good.

lul u rite

Somehow, I fixed it (or it fixed itself).

Regardless, for Cecil: [attach=7784]

Not sure what happened, but it works fine now.

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MSConfig is definitely the way to go. But make sure theres nothing inside All Programs > Startup as well.

Ahhahahh this is what I thought.

Alright, here is what mine looks like:


That's it! I wasn't kidding when I said delete everything you don't recognize, and then delete everything else you wouldn't double click on when you turn your PC on. Delete everything in that list except Avast and possibly Utorrent depending on if you are hosting torrents that need to be seeded (key word NEED).

Once you do this your pc should load windows near instantly relative to previous load times.

Edit: Even if your PC is running fine now, you NEED to delete the rest of those completely useless things. Seriously, delete it all except Avast.

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Oh man you've got so much clutter there... Here's a list of what you actually need. Entries in parentheses are PROBABLY not needed. You should notice the startup time to decrease an estimated 10 seconds. (It's really hard to tell exactly though)

• Yes HKCU:Run DAEMON Tools Lite "C:\Program Files (x86)\DAEMON Tools Lite\DTLite.exe" -autorun
  
• No HKCU:Run Sidebar C:\Program Files\Windows Sidebar\sidebar.exe /autoRun
  
• Yes HKLM:Run StartCCC "C:\Program Files (x86)\ATI Technologies\ATI.ACE\Core-Static\CLIStart.exe" MSRun
  
• Yes HKLM:Run avast "C:\Program Files\AVAST Software\Avast\avastUI.exe" /nogui
  
• Yes HKLM:Run RtHDVCpl RAVCpl64.exe
  
• Yes HKLM:Run Kernel and Hardware Abstraction Layer KHALMNPR.EXE
  
• Yes Startup User Pidgin.lnk C:\Program Files (x86)\Pidgin\pidgin.exe
  
  
• (Yes Startup User µTorrent.lnk C:\Program Files (x86)\uTorrent\uTorrent.exe)
  
• (No HKLM:Run LedKey CNYHKey.exe)
  
• (Yes HKLM:Run RunDLLEntry C:\Windows\system32\RunDLL32.exe C:\Windows\system32\AmbRunE.dll,RunDLLEntry)

Please don't. Things like video, sound and image user interfaces are quite useful.

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I kept the majority of them. Mostly 'cause I need them (yes I need Pidgin or else the last semblance of life I have will be gone).

Sorry, but shitty programming > hardware every day of the week. My rule of thumb is to assume it's an inefficient piece of shit until proven otherwise.

Turn off Superfetch service and your boot times will probably halve if you have a lot of ram. I have 12gb and my startup times were exceeding 3minutes + because of windows pre-caching everything onto ram on boot. I disabled this and my computer is usable in 5 seconds after the desktop appears.

/edit

As for the comment saying that a single program cannot eat all your RAM... yes, they can.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on May 6 2011, 4:31 am by IskatuMesk.

Note how I did not delete pidgin from your list. (Not even Cecil did, who removed everything else). Keep in mind this is the list of what you should KEEP, not what you should remove.
And most of the things I deleted you don't need at startup. Nero, Acrobat, etc. they all pre-load parts so when you actually open the program they would load faster (without that pre-load service they still load but a second or two slower). So leaving these processes there eats both RAM and bloats startup time even if you don't use the program in this session ==> needless weight on your resources. Highly recommended not to leave them there.

Of course they can and that's the famous exception to the rule. But really that's most likely irrelevant for him. I like to keep it simple when dealing with problems.

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on May 6 2011, 6:07 pm by NudeRaider.

System Restore doesn't save everything, just so you know. If a virus went through and deleted everything in My Documents, System Restore wouldn't do anything (and the same goes with certain file types, like word documents).