[mphenterprises]

smax013 said:

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Keep in mind that [~22087] (and myself) tend to only have Windoze and programs on our boot drives and store "files" (documents, movies, songs, etc) on a different drive, so our boot drives are typically small (relatively speaking) and don't have a whole lot on them.

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Very good point, SMax. I would throw myself in this category. I have 4TBs of total hard drive space. My Windows XP partition (drive) is about 35GBs and my Windows Vista drive is about 20GBs. So, relatively speaking, my boot drives are minuscule compared to the overall available space. I think that is the best way to go.

[techie4fun]

Wow, good points. I never thought of storing my data files on a separate drive. Windows certainly chugs along QUICKER at bootup when your hard drive is empty.


You learn something every day :D

[smax013]

mphenterprises said:

Very good point, SMax. I would throw myself in this category. I have 4TBs of total hard drive space. My Windows XP partition (drive) is about 35GBs and my Windows Vista drive is about 20GBs. So, relatively speaking, my boot drives are minuscule compared to the overall available space. I think that is the best way to go.

My XP drive is a 160 GB drive, but only has about 13 GB right now on it (I have not fully converted all my programs over to this computer as of yet...some are still on my other computer). My Vista drive is an 80 GB drive and only has about 17 GB on it (I will note that unlike my XP drive, I have not yet created a seperate partition for my swap disk files for Vista, so they are contain on the boot drive on the same partition as the OS...while my XP boot drive has one partition for the OS and programs and another for the swap file/virtual memory). My other drive is another 160 GB with a clone of my XP install minus a lot of the "other crap"...this is the boot OS that I use for gaming (i.e. so that I don't have a bunch of unneeded memory resident programs loading that I don't use with the games)...it has about 20 GB on it, largely because it has several decent sized games installed.

[bulletproof]

mph...Alas, no solution in the removal of Norton's AV (a bittersweet result since I paid for the software but would gladly sacrifice the duckies for a solution here).



I am very busy with work so I have not been able to research whether the virus may have loosed a gremlin in my registry, but that is my next step.



HT to rgreen for the Avast recommendation. I have downloaded it and am going to give it a run for awhile while I keep working through this issue. I downloaded SuperAntiSpyware earlier (and ran it along with Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware) as recommended to me by SpiritWind, both programs of which I really like and am thankful to have been directed to.



Thanks to all =)

[mphenterprises]

bulletproof said:

Alas, no solution in the removal of Norton's AV (a bittersweet result since I paid for the software but would gladly sacrifice the duckies for a solution here).

Just to confirm, you uninstall Norton using the Symantec Norton Removal Tool and you still have the same 20 minute startup, correct?

>I also noticed that you indicated you could access the Task Manager. It appears you have done quite a bit of research on your own but I did not notice if you ever checked the Processes tab of the Task Manager to see what process(es) is(are) taking up the most CPU Usage during startup.
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If you have not done this as of yet, can you please restart the computer, and while the computer is booting up, open Task Manager and see which process is using the most CPU Usage.

[bulletproof]

Yes. Used link you provided and downloaded and ran Removal Tool for my version of Norton AV (2008) and I still have to wait 20 minutes for boot up.



Forgot about the Task Manager question. I will address that tonight as well. However, I have observed the Processes Tab during start up several times, clicking on the CPU column to arrange the processes in descending order of CPU Usage to more easily track the actively running ones and what I observed was 3 or 4 processes (explorer.exe and taskmgr.exe I know are two) jumping "in and out" of the top of the list using various amounts of CPU resources. I didn't follow through by looking up the unknown (to me) processes, but I will be sure to get that back to this thread as soon as I can and any answers I can dig up on them at processlibrary.com.





Many thanks =)

[mcbarker]

I haven't read all of the postings in this entire thread, so excuse me if this has been asked already. Have you tried completely disconnecting your online connection, and then starting your system, and if so, was there any difference in the bootup time?

Also, if possible, it might be helpful if you could post a screenshot of your Task Manager's Processes tab so that we can see exactly what's running in your system.

[bulletproof]

!ps1 edit.bmp! !ps2 edit.bmp!

First screen shot is 3 minutes or so into boot up as far as the "System Idle Process" is concerned. Second screen shot is a little more than 20 minutes into boot up (toward the end of the time when HDD is quiet but before everything finishes booting). You can see that there are processes that load during that "quiet-time" and I am unable to fit all the processes running into one screen shot (I had to cut and paste the right scroll bar out of the second image to make it large enough to read). In the first image what you see is all that it loaded at that time. I can go back and "scroll down" at around the same time interval as image two to reveal those processes hidden from view and screen shot that, but because of the time involved to do what we have here I didn't have time to "voluntarily" provide that. But let me know..



In researching Win95/Blumblebee.1738 virus I found that, first, it's 95/98 specific and would not be able to exploit XP in the same way or at all, and that my virus notification was likely caused by a leftover panda virus signature (pavdll.dll) that Ad-Aware took for a virus because Panda does not (or did not) encrypt their virus signatures. I switched from Panda's Internet Security back to a seperated security setup in October of last year.



Last, my bootup time is not affected with my wireless adapter service disabled. I don't hardwire into the router so that's not an issue either.



Many thanks =)

[bulletproof]

"One more thing!"

Good grief, can anyone read that above? Let me try again...





much better!

[drmsucks]

@bulletproof - You previously asked about a program to monitor your Win startup process; arguably the best is: Autoruns, http://technet.micro.../bb963902.aspx.

You appear to be knowledgeable so the program ought to be self-explanatory - it would surprise me if the program does not reveal the "bad actor" in your startup process.



Best of luck!

[Tech4me]

Hi Bullet. Looks like you did most everything that members here suggested ....

If you still have Wds install CDs ......I think its time to to do a CLEAN INSATLL ...and start over with a fresh system ...It'll save you all the headache...IMO.

Good luck.

(BTW....Don't worry about "the idle process" Look at the "CPU usage"...)

!http://forums.pcworld.com/legacyimages/
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[bulletproof]

drm...I look forward to trying the tool you provided a link for. I will download this evening and run with great anticipation!



tech4..I started this thread in the hope that fixing my .net 2.0 issue would resolve everything, or at least reveal something. Everytime I have returned here I have been provided with an extraordinarily positive experience and a real feeling of interest in this community, so I am holding out for a solution that doesn't require what you suggest. But, alas, I am well aware that I might (nay, probably) will have to do just that.



regards/bulletproof

[rgreen4]

Bullet, you have displayed far more patience than I could ever muster. If that had been my machine I would have either reinstalled Windows from scratch by now !http://forums.pcworld.com/legacyimages/
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or chucked the whole thing through the window.

!http://forums.pcworld.com/legacyimages/
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[bulletproof]

rgreen: Indeed, if it weren't for the fact that the crazy thing works like silk after it boots I would have bid farewell sometime ago. As it is, I have the luxury of tenacity and unlike a simple dog with a bone, I also have a burning curiousity to reveal this gremlin and perform a little ground and pound on its data-maker! =)





Cheers

"There are 10 kinds of people in this world: those who understand binary and those who don't." (My wife just texted that to me)

[mcbarker]

BP... You have quite a lot of stuff in your startup configuration. Some of it is unnecessary convenience, and some may, or may not, be necessary. I would suggest going into msconfig and temporarily disabling the following, reboot, and see if it helps:
JQS,EXE (Java Quickstart)
CLI.EXE (ATI Control Panel)
IPOINT.EXE (Mouse software)
ATI2EVXX.EXE (Why do you have 2 instances of this running?)
DLACTRLW.EXE
AAWSERVICE,EXE (Ad-Aware program)
MDNSRESPONDER.EXE (I-Tunes)
CTFMON.EXE (Memory hog which can be disabled permanently if you don't use MS Office Accessibility options)
DPUPDCHK.EXE (Intellipoint software)
JUSTCHED.EXE (Java Updater)
GOOGLEUPDATERSERVICE
EHTRAY.EXE (Windows Media Service program)
QTTASK.EXE (Quicktime program)
FXSSVC.EXE (Fax program)
If one or more of these startup programs are in conflict with each other, disabling them may help. If you do notice a difference, then you can start adding each, one at a time, then rebooting, to find out which is causing the problem.
Other than that, there doesn't appear to be anything malicious in your startup list.

[Flashorn]

Hey bulletproof !!



I see you are still having problems with your start up.

I have to agree with rg, you are a courageous fellow.



McB just followed up on what I was thinking of asking

you to do. If you want a little help with your startup ,

I have a program and a site to suggest you visit and

install (actually , it's a .exe) to see if there would be more

suggestions on what to disable safely from your start up

list.

Startuplite from MalwareBytes . The .exe (choose the free trial) .



Welcome to Startup Inspector for Windows . The site.



FLASHORN. !http://forums.pcworld.com/legacyimages/
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[bulletproof]

Flash: I'm still working through familiarizing myself with the Autoruns program that DrM provided the link for above. It is substantially in depth, but I swear it looks like the timing coincides with the loading of my .net framework apps. I suppose I could just be biased. But I will download the Startuplite you have recommended.



I haven't gone through and disabled everything that mcb has suggested but rest assured that when I am able to sit in front of my LT for more than 20 minutes I will. I will post as soon as I can



Thanks to all for sticking with me! =)

[bulletproof]

Well...no victory here. None of the processes/services that you pointed out have changed my load time, mcbarker. Sooooooooooooo.............



I'll have to give credit to the fat bear with the ninja stick (rgreen4) as on the second page of this thread he provided some really great info on re-installation of my OS which appears to be the solution to my problem (egads!!). But I want to thank Flashorn for the solution to my .net framework 2.0 issue. This thread has provided me with a couple of really good security programs (SuperAntiSpyware and Malwarebytes Anti-Malware) thanks to SpiritWind and some really fun apps (Autoruns and Startup Lite) thanks to DrM and Flashorn.



I've dug deep enough! Haven't been able to isolate this and my reflection is starting to ask me "why?". It's reconstruction time!



Take care, bulletproof.

[coastie65]

Hey bulletproof, I noticed that that thing has an 80 Gb Hdd. I Didn't see any mention within the thread as to how much stuff you had on it. If the "free space" is somewhere south of 40 Gb, then that will definitely slow things down. coastie

[Flashorn]

Hey bulletproof !!



Real sorry nothing worked . I must say that you stayed with this for more

time then I would've. But, my initial thought was (and I didn't mention this)

that in the msconfig, I would have unchecked everything except Video and

mouse then would reboot and see if it was a conflict. Then I would have

re-checked one at a time. But yeah , this would be one heck of a long process.



If and when you do re-install , give us some news so we can know if it solved your

problem.



FLASHORN. !http://forums.pcworld.com/legacyimages/
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