Question: My XP Machine is super slow booting to the desktop.
Written by Karl L. Gechlik | AskTheAdmin.com on August 1, 2007 – 9:47 am -We all hate when it takes forever for our computer to boot up. And it is usually an easy thing to fix and diagnose but not today! AtA has a issue that you readers need to help one of your own with. Check out the issue and leave what YOU think is the issue in the comments! And FonDoo we have some more questions we emailed you and now there a few more @ the bottom of this post. We WILL get to the bottom of this!
FonDoo writes to us:
My notebook is taking longer and longer to boot to desktop now. Any idea’s why?
I’ve already went into start/run/msconfig/startup and removed useless junk
app’s. Even in Windows Defender / Tools / Software Explorer, I’ve removed Adobe Acrobat, Quicktime and iTunes and it still takes longer to boot to my desktop. I had NHC(Notebook Hardware Controller) installed, but removed it few days later after experiencing slowness to boot to desktop. I really do not want to reformat my notebook and reinstall Windows XP. Any thoughts? Thanks again.
We replied back and forth for a bit and we got this additional information:
Thanks for the quick reply. I have not installed any new software lately,
besides NHC(which was completely removed from Add/Remove Programs. I am running McAfee VirusScan Enterprise 8.5i and the latest Windows
Defender.Thank you.
Awesome Blog! I check your blog site regularly. Keep up the good work :)
Hmmm we had our troubled friend uninstall Mcafee to see if that was the issue. But it wasn’t. Then we tried system restore to go back a whiles before his last software installation. But again super slow booting to the desktop. FonDoo tells us nothing really is hogging the processor but the machine is lagging like a MoFo. We have requested screen shots of the task manager and information from the event viewer. Anyone else have some good ideas for a loyal reader?
One more thing to try FonDoo uninstall defender and reboot… Then go to Safety.Live.Com Microsofts free Full scanner and run the full scan. I have also seen a corrupt prefetch folder kill boot time - Try deleting all your files inside your prefetch folder. The necessary ones will be recreated on reboot.
How about your Windows Update - Are you up to date?
Let us know how it works out FonDoo!
Tags: How To, windows
Posted in Uncategorized |




By Psymon on Aug 1, 2007 | Reply
Few suggestions…
How much disk space do you have?
Have you defragmented the disk of late?
Try a 3rd party defrag progem like Power Defrag.
Make sure that there are now run-away processes by downloading Process Monitor, this will allow you to see every process running with its memory consumption and cpu load.
I found also AVG is a really good virus/spyware app that removes alot of stuff the mainstream ones don’t notice, so that’s worth a try also.
By ArlisCaponeMCSE on Aug 1, 2007 | Reply
all good suggestions i dont think i could be any assistance without some more information! Please submit
Arlis MCSE
By Anonymous on Aug 1, 2007 | Reply
how slow is slow? and have you run the microsoft live scan yet? come and see us when you have more information!
By fondoo on Aug 1, 2007 | Reply
it takes about 4 minutes to load to the desktop. The only USB device plugged in is a microsoft wireless usb mouse.
i ran the windows live without any success. the harddrive does not need to be defragged.
By Karl L. Gechlik on Aug 1, 2007 | Reply
how about hard drive space on your c: drive? How much memory is installed? And have you tried removing the prefetch folder or at least renaming it?
By JayDee on Aug 1, 2007 | Reply
screenshot of your taskmanger on the process sscreen sorted by processes high to low and maximize it so we can see all processes.
By Karl L. Gechlik on Aug 2, 2007 | Reply
others have had issues after removing Notebook Hardware Controller - use system restore to go back prior to the installation!
That should do it buddy!
By missingxtension on Sep 4, 2007 | Reply
Oh come on this one is simple.
What he needs to do is defragment and clean his registry, try the registry mechanic there is a free google version available. Theres also a Microsoft tool that comes from Microsoft that works really good but i haven’t found it again, i think its from the registry team.
By Karl L. Gechlik on Sep 4, 2007 | Reply
Safety.live.com does all that for your! Defrag and the whole 9!