Excessive Disk Activity on Startup

Upon startup, my machine takes almost ten minutes for the disk
activity to cease. This seems really excessive. Is there any way
that I can determine the cause of this, and if possible, remedy it?

I use AdAware and SpyBot religiously, as well as Scan Disk and
Defragment. And have also emptied the temp folders.

Any ideas greatly appreciated. Thank you very much, in advance,
David

"David" wrote in message
...
Upon startup, my machine takes almost ten minutes for the disk
activity to cease. This seems really excessive. Is there any way
that I can determine the cause of this, and if possible, remedy it?

I use AdAware and SpyBot religiously, as well as Scan Disk and
Defragment. And have also emptied the temp folders.

Any ideas greatly appreciated. Thank you very much, in advance,
David

anything large stored on your desktop? (anything other than shortcuts can
really slow you down at boot time)

what is in your "startup" menu ?

"David" wrote in message
...

Upon startup, my machine takes almost ten minutes for the disk
activity to cease. This seems really excessive. Is there any way
that I can determine the cause of this, and if possible, remedy it?
I use AdAware and SpyBot religiously, as well as Scan Disk and
Defragment. And have also emptied the temp folders.

Your first task is to find out what causes this 9-minute delay in
booting. It might be:
1. Your AV functions loaded at booting
2. Software you do not actually need (e.g. MS Office Fast Find,
Winfax Control, Sound card control).
3. Software you use often i.e. want to load at boot and keep TSR.

You could list what loads now (as reported by Ctl Alt Del) and
then unplug from the Internet and Clean Boot
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=192926&sd=RMVP
and take inventofy of the difference. In case 1 you can also
differentiate between the shields erected at startup (which
take a couple of seconds) and the scanning process (which
takes minutes -- therefore is not needed on Tuesday if you
shut down on Monday reasonably sure you had not
compromised your security.)

--
Don Phillipson
Carlsbad Springs
(Ottawa, Canada)

"START button, Run, MSConfig" & turn off the Startup Group, Config.sys &
Autoexec.bat. (Note: when you later turn them back on, all items in them
will get checked. So, note what may be unchecked first.)

Can you boot quicker to Normal Mode now?
If not... it's a driver doing it, likely. Try the article below.
If so... it's likely to be an item in the Startup Group. So, turn half back on. Reboot to determine whether it was something in that half doing it. Etc.

http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;en-us;281965
How to Troubleshoot Using the Msconfig Utility with Windows 98
(281965) - This article describes how to use the Microsoft System
Configuration (Msconfig) utility to troubleshoot configuration errors in
Windows 98 and Windows 98 Second Edition.

BUT BE CAREFUL-- better not disable System.ini & Win.ini, because that
can be trouble. Well, if you are sure of your Registry backups, actually
those two can be recovered this way...

(a) Boot to DOS. (Hold Ctrl for the Startup Menu, & select "Command
Prompt Only".)
(b) Scanreg /Restore
(c) Ctrl-Alt Del to Windows.

It will offer five dates. Choose the one of the last successful boot, to
start. These backups are done at boot, not at shut down. This should be
safe to do, if you haven't done anything to files in the mean time. This
will not restore files other than those .ini's & the Registry. It only
restores settings.


--
Thanks or Good Luck,
There may be humor in this post, and,
Naturally, you will not sue,
should things get worse after this,
PCR

"David" wrote in message ...
| Upon startup, my machine takes almost ten minutes for the disk
| activity to cease. This seems really excessive. Is there any way
| that I can determine the cause of this, and if possible, remedy it?
|
| I use AdAware and SpyBot religiously, as well as Scan Disk and
| Defragment. And have also emptied the temp folders.
|
| Any ideas greatly appreciated. Thank you very much, in advance,
| David

On Tue, 23 May 2006 13:36:13 -0300, "Haggis"
wrote:

"David" wrote in message
.. .
Upon startup, my machine takes almost ten minutes for the disk
activity to cease. This seems really excessive. Is there any way
that I can determine the cause of this, and if possible, remedy it?

I use AdAware and SpyBot religiously, as well as Scan Disk and
Defragment. And have also emptied the temp folders.

Any ideas greatly appreciated. Thank you very much, in advance,
David

anything large stored on your desktop? (anything other than shortcuts can
really slow you down at boot time)

what is in your "startup" menu ?

Thank you Haggis,
1) No, nothing large, only shortcuts
2) There are about 30 program folders in the "Start Menu". One of
these is the "StartUp" folder, which contains only four items, (which
haven't changed for a long time, -- years)

I can list all of these for you if that would be useful. But first
let me probe an intuition that was suggested in Ron's post below.
This might save us a bit if time...
Thank you again,
David

On Tue, 23 May 2006 13:04:09 -0400, "Don Phillipson"
wrote:

"David" wrote in message
.. .

Upon startup, my machine takes almost ten minutes for the disk
activity to cease. This seems really excessive. Is there any way
that I can determine the cause of this, and if possible, remedy it?
I use AdAware and SpyBot religiously, as well as Scan Disk and
Defragment. And have also emptied the temp folders.

Your first task is to find out what causes this 9-minute delay in
booting. It might be:
1. Your AV functions loaded at booting
2. Software you do not actually need (e.g. MS Office Fast Find,
Winfax Control, Sound card control).
3. Software you use often i.e. want to load at boot and keep TSR.

You could list what loads now (as reported by Ctl Alt Del) and
then unplug from the Internet and Clean Boot
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=192926&sd=RMVP
and take inventofy of the difference. In case 1 you can also
differentiate between the shields erected at startup (which
take a couple of seconds) and the scanning process (which
takes minutes -- therefore is not needed on Tuesday if you
shut down on Monday reasonably sure you had not
compromised your security.)

Thanks Don. (Sorry I said "Ron" in reply above!)
1) AV functions: You may have hit it here -- more below.
2) Unneeded software -- maybe possible, but not any of the three you
have mentioned.
3) There isn't anything that I have (intentionally) made a TSR.

But back to AV. I have had an intuition that this might be related to
Norton AV 2005, because this seems to have begun after I installed it.
(However I'm not confident enough to be sure.) But it certainly feels
like a scan at startup. I have, though, unchecked "Scan system files
at startup", under NAV = Options = Other = Miscellaneous. And the
"scan", (or whatever), still occurs. Are these at all useful clues?
Is there some other scan option in NAV that I am not aware of?

Otherwise, anyway, I shall still pursue your other suggestions above,
including your URL, which I haven't gotten to yet.

Thank you again,
David

On Tue, 23 May 2006 22:25:57 -0400, "PCR" wrote:

"START button, Run, MSConfig" & turn off the Startup Group, Config.sys &
Autoexec.bat. (Note: when you later turn them back on, all items in them
will get checked. So, note what may be unchecked first.)

Can you boot quicker to Normal Mode now?
If not... it's a driver doing it, likely. Try the article below.
If so... it's likely to be an item in the Startup Group. So, turn half back on. Reboot to determine whether it was something in that half doing it. Etc.

http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;en-us;281965
How to Troubleshoot Using the Msconfig Utility with Windows 98
(281965) - This article describes how to use the Microsoft System
Configuration (Msconfig) utility to troubleshoot configuration errors in
Windows 98 and Windows 98 Second Edition.

BUT BE CAREFUL-- better not disable System.ini & Win.ini, because that
can be trouble. Well, if you are sure of your Registry backups, actually
those two can be recovered this way...

(a) Boot to DOS. (Hold Ctrl for the Startup Menu, & select "Command
Prompt Only".)
(b) Scanreg /Restore
(c) Ctrl-Alt Del to Windows.

It will offer five dates. Choose the one of the last successful boot, to
start. These backups are done at boot, not at shut down. This should be
safe to do, if you haven't done anything to files in the mean time. This
will not restore files other than those .ini's & the Registry. It only
restores settings.

Thanks PCR,
I have run MSConfig, as you have suggested, and am getting a real
education from what's in there. Under the "General" tab I find 3
startup options: Normal, Diagnostic, and Selective. I will
investigate these further, as you suggest, and try the reboot
experiment.

My config.sys file appears to be empty. Does that seem strange?

I am wondering, should I do a "Create Backup" before I do any of this?
(Probably a dumb question, but I've never done this before.)

Thank you for the MSConfig URL. I will go there also.
Regards,
David

On Wed, 24 May 2006 08:27:10 -0600, David
wrote:

Thanks PCR,
I have run MSConfig, as you have suggested, and am getting a real
education from what's in there. Under the "General" tab I find 3
startup options: Normal, Diagnostic, and Selective. I will
investigate these further, as you suggest, and try the reboot
experiment.

My config.sys file appears to be empty. Does that seem strange?

I am wondering, should I do a "Create Backup" before I do any of this?
(Probably a dumb question, but I've never done this before.)

Thank you for the MSConfig URL. I will go there also.
Regards,
David

Followup to my previous:

With "startup group" and "autoexec.bat" turned off, it took 1.5
minutes to boot!

~~~D

"David" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 24 May 2006 08:27:10 -0600, David
wrote:

Thanks PCR,
I have run MSConfig, as you have suggested, and am getting a real
education from what's in there. Under the "General" tab I find 3
startup options: Normal, Diagnostic, and Selective. I will
investigate these further, as you suggest, and try the reboot
experiment.

My config.sys file appears to be empty. Does that seem strange?

I am wondering, should I do a "Create Backup" before I do any of this?
(Probably a dumb question, but I've never done this before.)

Thank you for the MSConfig URL. I will go there also.
Regards,
David

Followup to my previous:

With "startup group" and "autoexec.bat" turned off, it took 1.5
minutes to boot!

~~~D


please post the contents of your autoexec.bat ...

"David" wrote in message ...
| On Wed, 24 May 2006 08:27:10 -0600, David
| wrote:
|
| Thanks PCR,
| I have run MSConfig, as you have suggested, and am getting a real
| education from what's in there. Under the "General" tab I find 3
| startup options: Normal, Diagnostic, and Selective. I will
| investigate these further, as you suggest, and try the reboot
| experiment.
|
| My config.sys file appears to be empty. Does that seem strange?

That's OK. The problem isn't in your Config.sys, then.

| I am wondering, should I do a "Create Backup" before I do any of this?
| (Probably a dumb question, but I've never done this before.)

It's blurb says: "Creates a backup of the Config.sys, Autoexec.bat, System.ini and Win.ini files. Each file is backed up by making a copy of the file with a .pss extension. The backup file resides in the same directory as the original file."

You will get .pss backup files that way. Won't hurt. Unfortunately...

(1) It doesn't cover the Startup Tab.
You still need to know which were unchecked in there (if any) before
unchecking to load the Startup Group. This is because, after it is
rechechecked, ALL items inside will get checked.

(2) It seems to be all or none with those .pss files, when clicking
backup/restore.

| Thank you for the MSConfig URL. I will go there also.
| Regards,
| David
|
| Followup to my previous:
|
| With "startup group" and "autoexec.bat" turned off, it took 1.5
| minutes to boot!

May as well show Haggis your Autoexec.bat. But I think you are right to suspect it is a setting in your Norton AV 2005 doing it. I don't have that, BUT... I can think you needn't have it do a full system scan at boot. Set it scan files on use, instead.