Start up process control

[eniqmah]

Hi,
Would you folks mind lending me some advice about the boot process? I have disabled pretty much all unneeded services and applications from booting. Only 38 processes run on start up and yet it still takes over 3 minutes from the time I press the power button till the time I can launch applications. Other than the bare minimum Windows services, I have the following applications run on startup: McAfee Virus Scan Enterprise 8.0, Zonealarm Pro, Notebook Hardware control, Stylexp, objectdock plus.
I've used Microsoft bootvis to optimize the boot process, but that didn't really help. I would really appreciate some insights.
Please note that this slow down occured due to the following:
1. I upgraded my zonealarm to the newest version, which caused my windows to crash if I shut down zonealarm.
2. Uninstalled it, reinstalled the older version.
3. Slow boot process occured.

[WSFuser]

try disabling notebook hardware control, stylexp, and objectdock plus (from startup) one-by-one and see if u get faster boot speeds.

for ZA, u could try uninstalling it again and then running a registry cleaner such as teh one included with crap cleaner.

[eniqmah]

Thank you,
I appreciate your reply. I have tried disabling those other apps without any help. I am in the process of hunting down a good registry scanner to compact and repair the registry to see if it helps. In my suspicion, it must be the ZA reinstallation and whatever effects that might have had on my registry. I'll update when the registry scanning is done. In the mean time, any other suggestions is welcomed.

[WSFuser]

u need a registry cleaner not compactor. they have different functions.

[MICRO]

-{ Quote: ". In the mean time, any other suggestions is welcomed." }-
Maybe have a look at,
www.WinASO.com
Scroll down to their freeware WinASO RegDefrag.

I use Regseeker first - deleting any they show Green and being careful with the Reds - though they make a backup of everything.

Then only from Safe Mode I run the WinASO mentioned and though I
can't measure the speed I do think my machine is sharper after.

Regards.

[furballi]

Remove ZA and retest. If okay, then you need to clean up the registry and revert to the previous version of ZA. I'm still using ZA Pro 4.5.594.000 because the latest ZA is too slow and buggy with my PC. If your vesion has the INTERNET LOGS folder, then delete this folder before reloading ZA.

Boot time from power to desktop is 23.5 seconds. Shutdown is 3.5 seconds. Also have 8.0i with A64 @ 2.7GHz core speed and 1GB of RAM. Task Manager shows 13 processes after PC boot.

[Notok]

I would set the Device Manager to "Show hidden devices" and look for leftover drivers from software you have previously uninstalled. After that, TuneXP (http://www.driverheaven.net/dforce/showdoc.php?doc=txp_about) may help a bit (use the "ultra fast boot" option, it moves boot files to the beginning of the drive and defrags them in the process).