Slow Boot and Slow Shut Down

I took my machine into PC world today I didnt have time for a full health check just a hardware install. But they said they had major problems installing the drivers due to a compatabilty problem with some other software on the machine. But what they also said is my machine is running slow. Especially the startup boot and the shut down. They said this was likely due to either spyware, a virus or some software i have installed. Now can i ask does anyone have any suggestions on what to do as after they have said that i have noticed it myself.

I run spywareblaster and macafee spyware and run a spyware test every night with Micrsoft AS. But it finds nothing. I ran a scan a few days ago with mcafee virus scan and it found nothing too.

So what do you suggest to do. They said to do a full system restall but i despise doing that and would rather only do that if absolutely neccissary.

Any suggestions on what to do. programs to try to fix it would be extremelly appreciated.

Thanks
Anthony

 

Well, too be honest I don't place must trust with PCWorld, although I have a PC from them, in my experience they do not provide much quality but that is just a personal opinion.

Just out of interest was the problem before or after you took the PC into the shop to be checked. Because if they have cause the problem, they should really sort it out for you.

I guess you should run an up to date virus scan, spyware, adware and so on. Possibly try doing a system defrag, see if that helps. Or as suggested you could do a system recovery, however you would have to install all your programs over again, which i know is annoying but it tends to sort a large number of problems.

Jimbob

 

Actually, if you're using many RAM intensive applications, slow shutdowns can occur. You said you did scans and found nothing. Try doing some of those online scans, I know of only one, http://housecall.trendmicro.com (see wilders.org for others) then see what is reported.

I feel it may not be spyware or virus, your PC might be starting up slow because some drivers tend to initialise a bit late, especially soundcard drivers.

Also if your AV does a background scan on bootup then startup times would be big.

As for shutdown, I say that if you have RAM intensive apps running (after all, you got AV monitor and MS AS monitor and possibly some more programs) then Windows takes more time to shutdown as it tries to clear memory which would take a longer time then.

Try updating your motherboard drivers, it can improve speed by using better Hard Disk drivers, it happened to me.

If you have a VIA motherboard, install the VIA IDE Accelerator from http://www.viaarena.com (search in Drivers-->Hard Disk drivers) and install it, there will be a noticeable gain in speed.

Hope that helped.

Regards,
Firecat

 

Have a look at the start up processes if posible and see what is starting up when windows starts. That might be of use.

Jimbob

 

Also a slow shutdown can be due to Windows clearing your swap file.

If you're running 2000/XP you can check this registry key to see if you're swap file is being cleared:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\ClearPageFileAtShutdown

1 is enabled
0 is disabled

Bill

 

'Bill'? Are you by chance the great one?

 

Thanks, can i ask how do i go about doing that as i cant seem to see my motherboard in device manager.

Thanks

 

I don't agree with PC World. I don't believe that they offer 'sincere' services, and the pricing is off-key.

As for updating the MB drivers... this can be a tricky process that could involve flashing the BIOS. If you are looking for the Chipset driver updates, then you need to check the make and version of your MB, and then go to the company website and search for the drivers. If the ones that you find are newer than the ones that you have, then download the new ones. You will need to look for chipset drivers and BIOS versions. A way to check the BIOS version is when you start the computer, check on the boot screen at the very start, there should be a version number for the MB BIOS listed - write it down or remember it. For the Chipset version, chances are if the BIOS is newer than your current version the Chipset is also newer - download those too.

Remember, don't fiddle around with your BIOS unless you are totally sure about what you are doing - seek professional documentation for your motherboard model before altering the BIOS.

Apart from that things should be pretty easy .

 

The company originally was competitive on price, however they could not do it without loosing money so they focused on customer satifaction instead which thet basically use to sell their insurance plan

Jimbob

 

Hi Firecat,

Definitely not a great one...maybe mediocre at best.

Bill

 

OK here's how you do it...

Right click on My Computer icon on your desktop
Click on 'Hardware', then 'Device Manager'
Then you will see a tree of your PC hardware.
Expand the 'System Devices' thing, then report all the names of the devices here. Then I'll be able to get you the appropriate drivers.

Also it would help me if you found out what's under the tree titled 'IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers'.

Regards,
Firecat

 

Thanks here are my sytem tree.

 

And here is my IDE

 

What's the make of the motherboard and it's model number? You can check by opening your computer, and looking at the motherboard itself. Either that or you could grab the box for the MB, although if you got it from PC World or another package-deal company I don't think that they would have given you the box. If you find out the make and model, then we can start to determine what drivers you need. We now know from your screenshots that the drivers are for the VIA Chipset.

 

Thanks but at this moment in time i really dont feel confortable opening up my system. I just dont have the knowlege or experience to do it (i know people may laugh at statement as it is probably simple but i would prefer not to try to attempt it as i am worried i will cause damage to my system).

Is there anything else i can do

 

Hello Anthony, yes u can use this tool to find out all the info about your system and much much more besides.

Here is a link to Major Geeks website to download it.

http://www.majorgeeks.com/download181.html
Aida 32 is no longer supported by the makers, but can still do the job that u require and here is a picture of this programme to show u.

THE MUL

 

Thanks mul that is an excellent program

Here is my motherboard details.

 

No problem Anthony, I have to go to my work now, but I am no expert in this field, I am just adding some more info to help u out and maybe with the info that AIDA32 gives u and other peoples help u will find the answer my friend.
I will look in later after work and see how u are getting on.

THE MUL

 

OK anthony1uk,

It seems you have a VIA chipset. Many applications have problems with VIA chipset if you don't regularly update your drivers.

Your motherborad is based on VIA KM266 chipset. See this link for drivers:

http://www.viaarena.com/default.aspx?PageID=2&Type=1

here select your Windows version (I believe it is XP), then click on 'Chipset or Platform Driver' then download the retro chipset drivers as VIA thinks those are best for KM2xx boards.

Installation should not be a problem.

Also download the VIA IDE Accelerator from here:

http://downloads.viaarena.com/drivers/IDE/VIA_IDE Accelerator_V120b.zip

EDIT:- Link does not seem to work.

Alternate:- go to the first link, select OS, select 'IDE,RAID and SATA' and then click on 'VIA IDE Accelerator'

This improved my PC performance respectably, not sure about bootup/shutdown times though.

 

Anthony, I wouldn't go rush out on a binge and start upgrading drivers and flashing your BIOS without thinking through the process. You can get yourself into even more trouble if you aren't careful. I'm not saying that it might not be useful, I'm rather just saying to take your time and think things through. The other thing is this... have you noticed that startup and shutdown have gotten longer or did they just always seem long. If they have gotten noticeably longer then you can pretty safely rule out hardware level issues like drivers and BIOS. There are some BIOS level changes that can affect startup/shutdown, but they would pretty much have always affected startup/shutdown.

Lengthy shutdowns usually have to do with one or more of your Windows services. When Windows shuts down, it goes through this process whereby it tells every Windows service to shutdown and it gives every one of them a certain span of time in which to do so gracefully. I don't remember the default period of time used, but I believe it is on the order of up to 20 secs for each service. They way to possibly diagnosis this is to scan your Event Viewer entries and also to become keenly aware of exactly which services are running on your system.

Slow startup is likely due to the number of processes and services you have automatically starting. It doesn't even necessarily need to be all spyware, you may be one of those people that has about 15 resident tooltray programs and 10 3rd party windows services all running in the background in addition to Windows normal plethora of processes.

Get Sysinternals Process Explorer and Autoruns. Use Process Explorer or Windows Task Manager (ctrl+alt+del) to enumerate your active number of processes. How many do you have normally? Use Autoruns to examine all of your system's auto-start locations. What's all hiding in there. You might want to also download a utility called Bootvis which was originally written by Microsoft for internal use and OEMs, but wasn't really meant for consumers. You can use it to outline exactly what processes are being initiated at startup and how much time each is taking. It will be useful for you as a diagnostic tool. It can also help out by laying out the files on your drive for a more optimal boot reading pattern, but supposedly this will also occur normally after some amount of time if you just use the normal Windows defrag utility on occassion. I would personally start with these tools before going on a driver and BIOS upgrade rampage.

 

I agree with Alec. If you aren't ready to open the side of your computer you really shouldn't try to install any motherboard drivers or alike either.

When Windows starts up, if it takes forever, and if you see many (8 or so) icons in your taskbar, the chances are that it is to do with real-time applications that are constantly running in the background, or are initiated at startup for a quicker access time eg. MS Office suite. I'm not sure how familiar you are with the administrative tools on Windows XP, but if you go to Start > Run > then type "msconfig" and press enter - you will be shown a small window with many options - in the 'Startup' tab, the options correlate to what happens when you start up the PC - moreover, what application processes are loaded when Windows loads. (These have nothing to do with the time it takes to shut down, just what happens when Windows loads - although having said that, shutting down these processes may make shutdown take longer). SO, if you are now able to choose what application processes are loaded at startup, then you can remove some so that startup does not take as long - and this can also relieve the CPU of some load by removing real-time processing in the background). However, the applications sometimes don't show in the startup list in msconfig as recognisable names. Some do, like Quicktime will appear as "qttask" - and you can enlarge the 'Command' column to see where the process is located. This may help you determine whether or not you need to have it in the startup list in msconfig.

Again, if you have any queries just reply to this post - I don't expect you to understand everything from this post but of course, I feel obliged to let you know of possibilities of why your system may be taking so long to start up.

`Mishima San`

 

I agree with Alec.

Check for warnings and errors in your Events viewer. Bootvis as recommended will help speed upm start up. However, correcting all the warnings and error messages in your events viewer will go a longer way in speeding up your start-up time.

To speed up your shut down time, download UPHClean.
Leave Windows XP to handle something like shutting down, and it will likely take its own sweet time about it. Here are some things I did to light a fire under XP at quitting time:
- Start Menu / Run... / Regedit / press ENTER
- Go to HKEY LOCAL MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control
- Double-click the entry called WaitToKillServiceTimeout (or create it as a REG_SZ string value if it's not there)
- Set its value to something lower than the default of 20,000 (I chose 1000)
- Go to HKEY CURRENT USER\Control Panel\Desktop
- Find the entry called AutoEndTasks (or create it as a REG_SZ string value if it's not there)
- Set the value to 1
- In the same list of entries, look for WaitToKillAppTimeout
- I gave mine a value of 2000
- Also in the same list, there should be one called HungAppTimeout, which I gave a value of 2500.