PC taking an age to boot

[PeteJ]

For some reason recently my PC has been taking far longer than it should do to boot - in particular it 'hangs' for about 15-20 seconds on the "Welcome to Windows" screen.

I've tried everything I can think of, but I cannot get it to boot quicker. I know it sounds petty, but it is really bugging me because this never used to happen!

I've updated every driver on my machine, cleaned down local\ temp settings, cleaned down Start up software, removed unwanted network connections, installed, ran spyware and virus checks and even setup MS Boot Vis.

Nothing seems to make a difference

Any ideas?

Spec is
Athlon 3500+
1gig ram
Windows XP Home SP2

[wod]

could be dodgy stick of ram if you have dual channel ? , also try the default bios settings

[kernow]

try disabling the DHCP client service (if you dont use it of course)

[PeteJ]

I wouldnt' have thought it was the Bios because I haven't touched that since I first setup my PC - and haven't had any problems. However, as suggested I went back to defaults and suddenly everything has sped up again...

I played a little further, and noticed the default settings had taken down my AGP Appature size from 256 to 64mb (I do have duel channel, 2 x 512). When I put this up again, the PC slow booted. Currently it is back at 64 and is running far better...

I always believed that it was best to have the size set at about half your ram? Obviously this isn't the case. I'm not entirely sure what it does, of course

I'm a bit worried that it is the ram which is faulty, although it does give me the excuse to go up to 2gig when replacing!

Thanks for helping.

[Rav]

You could try running memtest to help you determine if your RAM is okay.

http://www.memtest86.com/

[Miguel007]

Try using the Disk Defragmenter in your System Tools.

I had the same problem found this, cause I didn't know what it was doing:

http://www.cyberwalker.net/faqs/how-tos/defrag-faq.html

Defraged my drives and now my PC runs a little bit faster, but not by much. You've probably already done this, but worth a try anyway.

[Mofoman]

Yes I would say the problem lies in either having spyware on your computer, if so download ad aware to check if you do not have a spy ware program.It may also be the drive needs defragmented as someone else said, if you have never defragmented the drive since purchase, you may need to reformat the drive.

It could also be a lingering virus, get the latest virus definitions and then do a virus scan.

[PeteJ]

Yeah I've done all that, many times

My first thought was spyware but there wasn't that much on the machine. I use adaware, but I've yet to try another piece of software.

Does anyone know exactly what the AGP Appature size does in the bios? I'm slightly concerned my Ram is faulty in some way as the higher I set it the slower my PC runs. I don't know enough about the setting to put weight behind that assumption, however.

[jon bda]

As mentioned by Rav, just download the cd iso of Memtest from their site and let that run for a few hours. Its a very handy tool...i had an old (P3) PC in the other day that would muck about with 256meg sticks of RAM in slots 1 and 2 but both tested out fine on their own in slot 1. Found with Memtest that it would work perfectly with RAM in slots 1 and 3 though...so its worth playing about with.

[mattSix]

google is your friend! but, to save you the trouble, as i'm a nice guy, try here & here & here & here... (no particular order)

the 'half your vram' rule is tosh. if you've got 256MB vram, i'd set it as low as possible to start with (64?) and work your way up if you're not getting the desired performance.