Comp. takes long time to start up

[chuckydale]

The last few days I turn my comp. on XP edition Home it comes on the screen and then it takes for ever to boot up the rest of the way.It takes about 6 or 7 min to get to my desktop page. I just bought the emachine a month ago. I did a recovery on it but didn't help any. Any ideas what could be wrong?I did remove most of aol that came with it. Chuck

[SKULLZ1987]

Try doing some maintenance on it. i.e defrag. then try out a few tweaks from www.tweakxp.com

[Phippy]

Originally Posted by chuckydale

The last few days I turn my comp. on XP edition Home it comes on the screen and then it takes for ever to boot up the rest of the way.It takes about 6 or 7 min to get to my desktop page. I just bought the emachine a month ago. I did a recovery on it but didn't help any. Any ideas what could be wrong?I did remove most of aol that came with it. Chuck

Did you buy it new or used? If new, then wipe it and use the original disc to reinstall. If you got it used, did you get the install CD? If not, you're in for a bit of trouble. The first thing I would do with any used computer is wipe the partition and install from scratch.

One thing, AOL is the worst piece of crap that's ever been released. It's very difficult to completely remove, as you alluded to. If there's a worse piece of "commercial" software out there I've yet to meet it.

[tomo222]

Firstly Get a Bootable WindowsXP Pro install CD

Run Defrag Before Install and backup applications etc

Boot from the CD (My Emachines boots from CD i didn't change the bios)

Selct defult partition and completely format it in NTFS
or FAT32<not recomended>

Continue and install

once installed and running do the following

1.
To allow Windows XP to close non-responsive applications automatically upon shutdown:
Open REGEDIT and navigate to 'HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop'
Highlight the value 'AutoEndTasks.'
Change the value to '1'
XP will now be able to close hung applications without user input during the shutdown process

2.
Disable That annoying Balloon Tips in Windows XP.
Open REGEDIT Find the key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curre ntVersion\Explorer\Advanced and add the DWORD value EnableBalloonTips. To turn of Balloon Tips the value should be set to 0.
To turn on Balloon Tips set the value to 1.

3.

Speeding Up the Display of Start Menu Items

the easiest way to do this is turn off the menu shadow.
Right click on an open area of the Desktop
Select Properties
Click on the Appearance tab
Click on the Effects button
Uncheck Show shadows under menus


Speed up the Start Menu
The default speed of the Start Menu is Really Really slow, but you can fix that by editing a Registry Key. Open Up REGEDIT and navigate to the following key:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Control Panel \ Desktop \ MenuShowDelay
By default, the value is 400. Change this to a smaller value, such as 75, to speed it up.


4.
Disable Windows Performace Counters
Go To Start Menu Run..
Type diskperf -n


5.
Speed Up XP Dramatically BY Doing The Following
Open UP REGEDIT Navigate To The Following Key
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\Session Manager\Memory Management\Prefetcher
you will notice in Windows XP

EnablePrefetcher = 3

Change it to

EnableSuperfetch = 1
and add the DWORD value first



Also Upgrading you Hardware Help Too along with All of this

Here my Spec

emachines 420

Windows XP Professional SP2
Mandriva Linux

2GB of RAM 2x Kingston 1GB 333mhz 184pin No ECC 2.5v Moduels
2.6ghz Intel P4 CPU
256mb NVIDA Gforce Graphics Card
TV Out
6x USB 2.0

[Kevin_gibson]

He actually did do a system recovery as it was said in hist first post.

If it still taking ages, I'd say your HDD is shafted.

Have it checked out.