Computer People ... Help, please!

[Twisterdog]

I have a HP Pavillion running Windows XP. The computer itself works great ... once it boots up. However, it is taking longer and longer every time to boot up. It doesn't matter if I turn it off completely, or if it just hibernating.

I'm hoping someone knows of a simple fix. I HATE to buy a new one just for this ... but I would hate it more if one day it just didn't boot up.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

[Karen]

Have you run any utilities on it? Defragmenting, virus/spyware programs, etc?

[Twisterdog]

Have you run any utilities on it? Defragmenting, virus/spyware programs, etc?

I have McAffee, and it is updated automatically daily. I also have Windows Update running automatically. I frequently delete cookies, history and do a disk clean up. I should probably defrag, though, been a while for that.

[Hellow]

Studies have shown that Defragmentation has very little affect on system preformance. I would recccommend a fresh install of Windows XP.

[captain]

Dfrag won't hurt ........ however it does sound like a hard drive issue.
You might have some bad sectors on the hard drive.
Do you have a good computer shop near you, where they can run a test to check the hard drive performance? Most of them do that ...

Take a back up NOW tho - just to be safe :D

[catnapper]

Ah, you might have to do what I did this past week. Go to your start menu, go to RUN, then type in MSCONFIG. A box will pop up and you can click the start tab. It will show everything that starts up when you reboot the computer. Whats in that list will amaze you.

I had a TON of spyware and viruses that started up whenever the computer did. No sooner did I uncheck the boxes next to the spyware and viruses did the computer actually start working properly! I wrote down everything that was in the list and checked what they were by Googling them, just to make sure they NEEDED to be there. I kept what was necessary and unchecked the boxes of what I did not want to startup whenever I reboot the computer. Now all that remains is figuring out why my spyware and virus software still is not recognizing the programs that were causing my problems.... but thats another whole issue.

[Catty1]

http://www.spybot.info/en/mirrors/index.html

Your pooter is likely clogged up with malware. Run the msconfig and install the above. It's free, and does a good job. You have to run it manually, but so what?

[Twisterdog]

I defragmented. I'm sure it needed it, poor neglected thing, but it did not reward me with faster awakening.

I checked the msconfig thing ... there are six programs in startup. One is my monitor and one is McAffee. I'll have to research the other four, but they appear to be MS Windows files to me.

I'll install the spybot thing later today and give that a try.

It's just wierd. I have a 27G hard drive, with 20G free, so it's not that.

Maybe he's just sleepy. Needs some more Java. ;)

[kittycats_delight]

sounds to me like a HD problem too. I would say a nice format and fresh install of XP is in order. We do this once or twice a year and it helps big time. We save all that needs saving. And start fresh and new. It is a pain in the butt to have to reinstall all the programs again but if you have the disks it's not so bad. We got ourselves an external HD to save everything on. We save to internal and then save again to external so once we have to format and install windows again everything is on the external and it is much easier.

[G535]

Go to C:\Windows\Prefetch and delete all files in that folder (the Prefetch folder not all the Windows files). :)

[Catty1]

That Prefetch thing....holy smokes! My computer boots up MUCH more quickly!

Thanks - never knew that! :)

I found this link to the MSCONFIG process very helpful: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/310353