XP Home Bootup

I have a laptop with XP Home. It has started taking 5 minutes to bootup from the time I turn it on until the icons appear for me to do anything. I haven't done anything that I know of that could have caused this delay.

 

Try doing a chkdisk.

 

Could it relate to the SP3 update?

 

I tried chkdsk and it still takes 5 minutes to open the icons. I have not tried to installXP sp3 so it is not that.

 

I neglected to mention that I did a system restore to correct the problem. It said the restore was successfully completed but when I rebooted the problem was still there. Is this any benefit to anyone in diagnosing the problem? I am waiting a few days before I reload everything. Since the restore didn't work I am not sure if reloading everything will help.

 

Could try to rebuild the icon cache by deleting the IconCache.db file.
Use Search to find it and delete it. Reboot and it will be recreated.
Alternatively use RegSeeker - in the tweaks section click "Rebuild Icon Cache"

Hope it works for you.

 

I deleted icon cache as you suggested an it did not solve the problem

 

First step is to find out whats starting up at boot,most likely a lot of uneccessary apps which are only needed on demand and are slowing down boot.

An easy way to shut these down is to install CC Cleaner-go to Tools-StartUp and RUTHLESSLY delete all unecessary items.

Also during start up-go to Task Manager-Processes- and find which Process is using the CPU.

Apart from System Idle,you will probably find one is running constantly-could be for example a scan-when it shouldnt be.

Rectify by shutting down/changing its settings permanently.

 

I luckily fixed my problem. I uninstalled avast and booted up. All my icons came up within a minute. I had been using a long time with no problem. I don't see why it would be a problem now.

 

Avast was probably set to scan at startup-reinstall and change scan times-best is on demand