Windows Re-install. Takes forever to load now.

[Alucard]

Yeah I posted this topic awhile back but nothing worked. I was going to pop the XP disc in and do a fix boot. Everything on my computer works fine, Windows XP takes about 1.30 seconds to load. How do I do a fix boot to attempt to fix this. I do not want to wipe my drive again to fix this, it's just annoying. Thanks!

[Lord Vetinari]

Looking at the previous thread, there were a few questions that were not definitively answered.
1. Did you check the DMA settings of the HD?
(Settings->Control Panel->System->Hardware->Device Manager->rightclick properties on IDE channels->Advanced Settings)
2. Did you install the MB drivers after winxp and winxp updates but before the vid card drivers?

Other things to check-
3. What progs/apps are loaded at boot time- things like Anti-virus and MBM5 can slow down bootloading considerably.
4. Check the system with anti spyware- eg adaware and/or spybot.
5. Check what is actually stating up using MSconfig from the run menu

[Alucard]

I am pretty sure that I installed the MOBO drivers first. Does it matter which drivers were installed first? I have no spyware, and yes I have PC cillin starting up, but here's where it is slow.....

I turn my computer on, and it tell you how much mhz video card info etc....then there is just a black screen for about 60 seconds, then it will come up to the screen where it says win xp is loading, then my screen comes up with my name where I can enter a password. As far as the DMA setting on the HD this is the screen I get, not sure what to make of it...although I have no idea what this is supposed to do.

[Alucard]

any idea how I can get these pictures larger. Photobucket automatically resizes them. sorry about the small print.

[Lord Vetinari]

On the Devices/ide controllers you should be able to find a subset that gives primary and secondary channels- and then advanced settings of those gives the current DMA settings.
On the intial install vid card drivers must be installed after the MB drivers, after that it does not tend to matter if you are doing vid or MB driver updates.
One other minor thing- how do you have the HDs and optical drives arranged on the IDE channels (ie which drives on which channel and which one is master or slave)
On booting is the delay before/during/after detecting IDE devices comes up?
Oh just seen some peeps are reporting boot delays after installing the Nvidia 5.1 UDP- http://www.nforcershq.com/forum/view...=asc&start=135

[I4one]

a couple of other guesses if it's not the IDE controller issue;

What is the Boot Order in the BIOS? - maybe put the HDD first - I always have CDROM first but I don't care about boot time (unless I'm trying to configure something that requires multiple reboots) .... either way take the floppy and / or Network and Removeable drives out of the equation (put em last in order).

Check to see if any Onboard Networking component is trying to configure itself on boot in BIOS (if not using Onboard LAN, you can disable this)...might even want to temp do it in Device Manager.

Clear your Indexing and Prefetch caches...and all others for that matter - Like IE TIF, History, Recent, Temp (look to see if there are entries here pointing to "other" drive letters, either removable or not in use, etc.)

Another thing to try is;
From MSDN
Idle Task Scheduling: The ProcessIdleTask API

The file placement optimization, which is done no more often than once every three days, is an example of a task that is carried out when the system is deemed to be idle. System Restore and other features of Windows XP also attempt to defer some work until the system is deemed to be idle. There are also some done-once-after-setup work items that also operate under the Idle Task Scheduling mechanisms.

All of these "idle tasks" are controllable by a system API in advapi32.dll, ProcessIdleTasks. The API s sole purpose is to allow benchmarks a simple way to force any pending idle tasks to be executed immediately, without having to wait a lengthy period of time.

The API ProcessIdleTasks can be called in one of two ways, from the command line or synchronously from a program. To call ProcessIdleTasks from the command line, use this syntax:

Rundll32.exe advapi32.dll,ProcessIdleTasks

When called from the command line, the ProcessIdleTasks work is done in the background asynchronously. It can take 10 to 15 minutes for idle tasks to complete. Task Manager will report processes running, and the disk will likely be active during this time.

The ProcessIdleTasks API takes no arguments and returns a standard Win32 error code. The definition is:

DWORD
ProcessIdleTasks()

The API itself is synchronous, so it won t return until the idle tasks have completed