Slow Startup

Hi - I have a 1 yr old Sony PC, well maintained. Yesterday it had a really slow shut-down - so I manually turned it off-probably my mistake doing that. Today when I boot up or restart - it takes several minutes rather than 30 seconds to get to the desktop. I tried "Restore" - no luck, same problem. This seems a bit ominous, and I'd like to get it back to normal. Any ideas? Many thanks, D

 

you could try Bootvis, i think it has an option to just monitor without making changes to the boot process, i had a really good tutorial on it but i can't find it now.
http://www.majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=664

but, you should never just turn off a PC, it's similar to dropping a needle on a record then doing abit of scratching.

 

What happens when you do that?

I've done that a lot when my comp just freezes. >.<

 

I have a little button on my computer case and when my computer freezes, I press this button and my computer reboots.

 

Hi Decapad,
If i were you, i would examine ATA/ATAPI IDE controllers in Device Manager. Sometimes when you "savagely" turn off a PC, the transfer mode may be affected (changed into PIO mode). If this is the case, the only solution is to remove all the controllers(primary, secondary and master) and reboot. Windows will reinstall them in UDMA mode again. This trick must be used with caution though (if any other solutions have failed to solve the problem!) and in recent computers only.
Cheers

 

You could also check the event viewer.May help to pin down some probs.

Control panel-administrative tools-event viewer.

 

u can also try defragging ur hard disk, using a registry cleaner and/or disk cleaner. also check ur startup items via msconfig.

 

Or you could simply go to: http://www.download.com/TuneXP/3000-2086_4-10290928.html and use this app's Defrag Bootfile features.

 

So, after turning off my computer savagely, should there be things I should do automatically?

Scandisk takes a really long time, as well as defrag, so are they recommended if I shut down harshly? I fail to have a reset button. Compaq is worst brad on earth.

 

with windows xp, it will automatically launch chkdsk if necessary. also, as long as u dont scan for bad sectors, it should take very little time. i dont do anything after a "harsh" shutdown.

 

here's a video showing a hard drive working. it shows the power down at the end, if it's writting when you turn the power off i was always told it will scratch the HDD.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9eMWG3fwiEU

it's an old thread, i know, but it's a cool video

 

First thing I suggest doing is to run scandisk...

My Computer>C-drive>Properties>Tools>Error Checking.

Check both boxes and let it do it's thing (you will have to restart). This will take a while, so find something else to do!

 

(i'm sneaking in here to just make a post so, hopefully, i can save this to my favorites and come back to it after my current problem is taken care of - my XP is slow-starting, too - like 20 minues!!!)