Windows 7 Long boot time on HP Laptop

[conundrum]

Hi, I've been trying to fix a windows 7 laptop for a couple of days now but nothing I do seems to make a difference. It's taking an average of 80 seconds to boot up (acording to event viewer).

So far I've removed 2 toolbars,
unticked most of the startup items in msconfig,
disabled search indexing, hp support assistant, and the lightscribe service,
disabled almost all of the graphics options (aero was already off),
updated windows, all available drivers, and the antivirus,
run a virus scan with windows defender and bullguard,
moved files from desktop to documents,
run ccleaner,
error checked and defragged all hard drives (used Auslogics defrag to move system files to the start of the drive).

None of this seems to have made any difference to the startup time, if anything it takes longer now than when I started. The performance diagnostic section of the event viewer shows that it's taking too long to boot, but doesn't show any programs consistently slowing it down, there are rarely programs that show up just once, but most boots there's nothing but a message showing the boot time. The specs of the computer are as follows:

windows 7 home premium
service pack 1
HP G72 Notebook PC
Rating 4.2
Intel(R) Core(TM) i3 CPU M330 @ 2.13Ghz 2.13 GHz
RAM 2.00 GB (1.86 GB usable)
64-bit

on startup, only these are ticked (sorry about the truncated names, I'm writing from a quick screenshot of the window)

Synaptics Po... (Pointer)
BullGuard
Easybits Rec... (Recovery)
HP Quick La... (Launch)
Java(TM) Pl... (Platform)
Bluetooth So...
HP Digital Im... (Imaging)

The only anomaly I could find is with the hard drive. There are 3 partitions, C, Recovery, and HP_Tools. C is the largest and only using about a quater of it's space. HP tools is small but again only a fraction of it is in use. Recovery though is about 12 GB and about 3 quaters full. Defragging with windows shows it to be 0% fragmented, but Auslogics Defrag shows it as 97% fragmented. Defragmentation takes only a second, after which it is still 97% fragmented. I don't know if this has anything to do with the bootup time.

Any ideas?

 

[patcooke]

Get a copy of autoruns from here:

Autoruns for Windows

It will give you a much more comprehensie picture than msconfig of what is running at stratup together the acility to either temporaraili stop any specific item or permanently remove it.

Regarding the items you have listed the only essen tial one is the antivirus (Bullguard - and even that only if you have no other one running - more than one is at best inefficient and at worst can cause conflicts).

 

[Joe S]

Another thing is to go to BlackViper Link Removed scroll down to the services list and then go into services and modify them. A lot of uneeded services start automatically that aren't on the startup tab.
Joe

 

[Saltgrass]

You are running the minimum memory requirement for x64 Windows 7. It may not be involved in this situation, but something to consider.

Msconfig.exe can also be used to only allow Windows 7 to load, have you tried that? The diagnostic startup on the General tab also gives you some options.

Does it do the same thing when booting into Safe Mode, with and without networking?

In some cases, the system might be looking for something. Perhaps related to the network connection, or some resource on that connection. Also local drives, even such things as memory card readers in printers, could be involved.

The HP recovery partition is there to restore your system, if needed. I would not consider it part of your problem.

At the same location Pat gave as the Autoruns link, there is also a program called Process Monitor. It normally runs to monitor what is happening on your system, but can be set to watch the boot process. SysInternals has a learning section that describes how these programs work, and some of us have used them, if you need help.

I don't suppose there is any more info in the Event Viewer listing? You can attach pictures using the paperclip on the advanced replies, so if you need to do that, it is available and the Snipping Tool is good for taking those pictures.

And lastly, where is the delay happening, prior to the Windows 7 logo screen or after? Maybe the fact you see the message in Event Viewer gives me a clue.

 

[conundrum]

Thanks for the advice everyone, I should be able to get the laptop back to try out your suggestions in the next few days so I'll post back with the results.

I couldn't find any more information in event viewer, though I don't have extensive experience in reading it, there were several items such as IsDegraded and IsBootAfterInstall (or something to that effect) that were all listed as false. The delay seems to be occuring mostly after the windows logo shows up, although sometimes there seemed even that seemed like it was taking a few seconds longer than it should.

Anyway, thanks again.

 

[conundrum]

Sorry about the delay, the problem seemed to have fixed itself for a while.
I've got the laptop back and timed it with a stopwatch, here's what happened...
Starting Windows shows: 9 seconds
Windows logo visible: 14 seconds
Screen goes black: 42 seconds
Welcome screen shows, sound plays: 66 seconds
(all times measured from pressing power button)

I've put Autoruns and Process Monitor on there, and logged just over 2 million events on bootup. I'm not sure what to look for though so I'll do some more research on Process Monitor although any advice would be appreciated.

Edit - Just tried starting up in safe mode. From selecting safe mode a few seconds after hitting the power switch, it took 30 seconds for the pointer to appear, and 40 seconds to get to the welcome screen.