so why does my laptop take 20 minutes to boot up?

Any computer dudes out there can explain what is wrong and why it does this?

It seems to get to the desktop and then take 15 minutes to load the bottom tool bar and then another 5 to get to the point where you can actually do anything on it. it's just churning away in the background.

A few details.

Its a Dell Insiron and is using about a third of the hard drive.
its got 8gb of ram.
It's been defraged.
Watching the program list (control/alt/delete) when its starting doesn't show anything unusual (but then I may not know what I'm looking for)
Its windows XP.

So what do I need to do to get the thing to boot up more quickly or how do I find the program that's causing it?

Cheers,
C

Until someone more knowledgable comes on, I'd advise you to look at the number of programmes you have loaded into your startup process.

If you type msconfig into your Run command bar, and then go to the Startup menu, you will see a list of programmes that the PC will load when you boot it up.

A lot of programmes seem to invite themselves into this startup process when you don't want them too. If you recognise something that you don't want to load when you boot up, untick the box. Save the Changes. Reboot the machine and see if it has improved things.

[flymo]

do you see any disc activity during this time?

Also, one thing I would recommend you try is to create another (second) user account, BerlinTest or whatever. When the machine boots, log in as the test user. If things happen much more quickly and more in line with what you would expect then its almost certainly something within your existing user profile causing the delay. Lets go down that road when we get there.

[Tom_the_great]

i would advise a good clean up ie defrag/spyware etc and as above

[jonny.boyd]

Is is 64bit windows XP? If not I don't believe it actually makes use of the full 8Gb ram. Believe it's limited to 4gb or something like that. Easiest option would probably be to upgrade OS. It is most probably something to do with the OS and something being a bit mucked up. I would say upgrade to Windows 7 and see how that does you.

[NTECUK]

When mums slows down a quick CCleaner run helps massively,
Have you STOP ALL YOUR UNNECESSARY START UP SERVICES AND PROGRAMS …
open them when you need them
Start/Run type : msconfig
go to the startup tab
uncheck everything but not whatever you think you can’t live without
leaving your virus scanner enabled
Now go to services tab and click the check box marked hide all microsoft services
whats left checked ? you really need these things ? ask yourself … probably not
click apply and ok

I use Glary utilities to stop programs you don't need running on startup, also with Glary utilities you can also do a registry defrag that seems to help a lot!

[Bibio]

if its got 8 gig of ram then its more than likely a decent machine so even if everything in the startup menu was on it still wouldn't take 20 mins to load to the desktop.

your antivirus may be set to do a full pre scan of the harddrive.

you may have an undetected virus that is self replicating.

you may have some form of malware that's phoning home as soon as the OS is loaded.

you may have a backup/tune up utility that is doing its house cleaning at startup.

but a good start is turning off stuff in msconfig.

64-Bit versions of XP aren't common at all so I doubt it's actually using all the ram, most likely around the 3.5 gb region. To find this out go to Start>Run> Then type dxdiag, on the first tab it shows it will tell you how much Memory it is using.

On task manager there is a check box at the bottom that says "Show Processors from all users" make sure this is checked. Typically with XP there should be around 35-50 processors running, anymore would suggest wasteful things running in the background and in turn slowing down your system.

Originally Posted by NTECUK

Start/Run type : msconfig
go to the startup tab
uncheck everything but not whatever you think you can’t live without

Certainly don't un-check everything on the start-up tab as there are some things that need to be started, just do a Google search on things you're not sure of.

Alternatively or if that fails go here: http://www.softpedia.com/get/Tweak/S.../BootVis.shtml

Download that program, and post the outcome here for us to read.

8 Gig of RAM and takes that long?! Haha!

Mate, seriously, upgrade to Windows 7 and you will never look back.

Windows 7 is awesome.