Windows 7 Temporary unresponsiveness after startup

Anton17

New Member
Joined
Oct 29, 2010
[SOLVED] Temporary unresponsiveness after startup

Hi all, I recently bought a refurbished laptop and after fixing most of the problems I've encountered, this one doesn't seem to want to go away.

For a quick run down of specs, I'm running Win7 Home premium 64-bit on an Advent Roma 4001, Intel Dual Core T4400, 4GB RAM and 500GB HD.

During the "Please wait" and "Welcome" messages it can take up to 2 minutes just to log on, but the main problem occurs after logging in. The CPU usage, apart from System Idle Process (of course) is pretty much zero, and the RAM usage is down at about 30MB. Everything seems responsive, however, when I attempt to open a program or process I'm getting incredible lag. If I'm quick enough, I can open up a window or two or a program before the lag strikes. The strange thing is it doesn't actually appear to be unresponsive (apart from when it lags with my internet browser on-screen and the loading animation freezes). The programs all load given time, usually between 2-5 minutes, and for all they run slowly for an amount of time, still run. I don't notice any processes or services that are hogging the memory or being specifically tied to causing the lag after executing them. The slowness is recurrent through every execution I make - through opening windows explorer to my internet browser, a program or just opening up the start menu - everything lags for the same amount of time. Something then just seems to "click" after a while, and everything runs smooth as pie; the programs I've tried to open up all flick on as if they were queued and waiting for something to clear.

I've tried chkdsk, messing around with msconfig, including performing a clean boot by turning off all non-windows process and startup icons within msconfig (and I have kept those settings for every boot, no luck), made sure all drivers are updated and functioning, seeing if the problem occurs in safe mode (it doesn't), checked event viewer for any critical errors (there are none, but a hell of a lot of standard errors, mostly, 7 Disk) no viruses or malware have been found after searches, ran sfc /scannow, checked the memory with a repair disk... I've tried a lot. From other problems with the system I've had to reinstall the OS 3 times and this has occurred on each install, so I'm not going through that again. It doesn't happen for around the first day after an OS install and crops up slowly, which tells me there's something that can be fixed, I just don't know what.

It may be worth noting that I can't seem to do a System Restore, since after running the restore I get a message pop-up after restart that it couldn't locate C:/Windows/assemblys/NativeImages etc... I have tried not to disable services in msconfig since it would delete my restore points, but I'm tempted - the problem may be there.

I haven't tried Driver Verifier (god forbid) and I'm really hoping it's not a hardware issue (since the problem is cured after a few patient minutes, I wouldn't think it was). Does anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks, Anton.



EDIT: The problem was the services. I was reluctant to tamper with them since it means you lose all your system restore points, but the problem was there. After disabling everything by running 'Diagnostic mode' in msconfig, the problem was gone. I'm still not sure what the service was, but after enabling my critical processes only, voila!
 
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Anton,

I am experiencing something similar. The time to boot to the desktop is reasonable, but once at the desktop, everything is real slow for a while. After about 5 minutes, things are snappy as can be, and remain that way until the next time I reboot. I, too, have been unable to identify any cpu-hog or anything strange going on.
 
Anton,

I am experiencing something similar. The time to boot to the desktop is reasonable, but once at the desktop, everything is real slow for a while. After about 5 minutes, things are snappy as can be, and remain that way until the next time I reboot. I, too, have been unable to identify any cpu-hog or anything strange going on.

It's nice to know I'm not the only one experiencing this strange problem. Frustrating as hell, isn't it? After doing all those checks, I just can't figure it out.
 
It is frustrating, especially since it goes away after a few minutes. I really dislike this sort of mystery...

I do have a workaround, though - I don't reboot :) I mostly just put my computer to sleep.
 
My sister's Dell lap top is a bit like that for a couple of minutes too.
Joe
 
I would understand it if I had used it for a while, the registry settings were all clogged up and general blockage when trying to access the HD. But it's new, clean, and has a fresh OS install of just over a week.

I'm starting to think maybe it might be the large HD. 500GB is not ground-breaking, but if it's cheap... what do you reckon?
 
Just a thought.
Have any of you got "Windows Updates" set to "Install updates Automatically (recommended**)".

It'll run (nearly?) every time you boot if you have. And it'll be a resource hog.

**Their words, not mine.
 
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Have any of you got "Windows Updates" set to "Install updates Automatically (recommended**)".

It'll run (nearly?) every time you boot if you have. And it'll be a resource hog.

**There words, not mine.

I sort of suspect that might be it, though I've never seen any evidence of it in the processes listing - no big cpu hogging seems to be going on. I will disable automatic updates and see what happens.
 
Well, with Windows Update turned off, the system might be marginally quicker to reach its normal performance. I suspect it is just a combination of post-boot things going on: Updates, Security Essentials doing its thing, other services firing up, the Action Center checking things out. Usually, a couple of minutes after the desktop is up, I get the little Action Center flag telling me everything is OK (this last boot it yelled at me for having automatic updates turned off :) and once it's done that, things really settle down and it feels like the boot process is well and truly completed.
 
You're welcome to post the system information and I can have a look at it. Type msinfo32 in the start menu then press enter. File | save on the opened screen.

Zip the saved file and attach the zip to a post.
 
I think this is kind of normal for Windows 7.
In XP it took a long time to get to the desktop, but Windows 7 seems to get to the desktop very quickly and then do a lot of loading after that.

My computer is clean as a pin, but I have it set to run updates, for both my antivirus, and anti-spyware and then it runs my Antivirus scan.

I just start it up in the morning and go have coffee and watch the news.
By the time I'm ready to work on my computer it's all done and runs great.

Mike
 
I just start it up in the morning and go have coffee and watch the news.
By the time I'm ready to work on my computer it's all done and runs great.

Brilliant. That's what I've been doing so far.

It's irritating, though, when I know I have to try to be quick to get online for something, and I'm just sitting there. It hasn't done it before and it was amazing when everything worked straight after startup. If I could just fix it... it would be like finally getting a stain out of your favourite shirt.
 
You're welcome to post the system information and I can have a look at it. Type msinfo32 in the start menu then press enter. File | save on the opened screen.

Zip the saved file and attach the zip to a post.

I will do this right after the next time I reboot. It would be interesting to see what's going on...
 
Thanks. Attached the info file to this post.

Your Realtek lan driver is old from months before Windows 7 was even released, March 2009. Update it from here:

RTL8111

Other than that, no issues to speak of. I'd disable the Windows Search service. It's one of the most common tweaks amongst advanced users. I'd also uninstall the Bonjour service.
 
TorrentG,

Attached is my msinfo32 file (sysinfo.zip).

Thanks for having a look...
 

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Thanks to all replies. It seems to have helped a bit, but I still can't get rid of that 2 minute unresponsiveness after logging on.
 
Thanks to all replies. It seems to have helped a bit, but I still can't get rid of that 2 minute unresponsiveness after logging on.
The only other thing I might add is, open the services management console
type services.msc into the search box and hit enter
scroll down to IP Helper and double click it
set the startup type to manual and reboot
see if that helps at all.
 
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