Computer issue: Long XP load time

dorkelf

dorkelf

Active Member
My computer is a 2.4 GhZ P4 with two 512 DDR chips (matching, runs as dual channel). It has a 250 GB SATA drive (7200 RPM 8 MB cache I believe, but can't remember the specifics) and a Radeon 9600 All-in-wonder video card (oldie but a goodie).

My brother's computer is a HP with a 2.4 GhZ P4. It has two 128 DDR chips (256 total memory) and a new 300GB Seagate 7200 RPM with a 16MB cache I just installed for him. As far as I know, all other components are "stock".

My brother boots Windows XP (SP1) in 16 seconds. My computer takes at least twice that long, maybe closer to a minute. My brother's computer also seems considerably faster than mine for Internet browsing with Firefox or IE (we both have broadband, but his is via Charter cable).

Does anyone have any ideas about why my computer is so much slower to boot XP, and slower in general use (opening and using the browser, etc) despite having more memory and the same processor as my brother's PC?

Paul
 
defragmenting is usually a good place to start...and newer computers tend to have less software installed, so they have less to do on startup. you can always disable unnecessary services if that doesn't do the trick to boost startup speed.
 
also go to start>run and type in MSCONFIG, in there u can shut off alot of things that startup when u boot, his hard drive may be set to boot first while yours is not, check bios for quick boot, and degrag might help
 
what anti-malware suites do you have on both machines? disk cleanup and disk defragmenter are proven performance enhancers as well. What peripherals are attached to each machine?
 
Hescominsoon said:
what anti-malware suites do you have on both machines? disk cleanup and disk defragmenter are proven performance enhancers as well. What peripherals are attached to each machine?
Click to expand...

Are things like CD-R drives considered peripherals? My brother's computer has two IDE CD-R drives (one is probably a burner) and an IDE 3.5 floppy. I'm not aware of any other devices it is attached to. It is an HP computer dating from about 2004, pretty much 'stock' except for the SATA drive I just installed for him.

My computer is a Shuttle XPC, about a year older (but again with the same processor). It has only a CD burner (about to be replaced with a DVD burner) on IDE and a 250 GB SATA hard drive, no other peripherals.

XP load time has been very consistent from the time I first installed XP on the computer, to the time I reinstalled it when I replaced the old HDD, to now. So I tend to doubt malware, registry, or other similar software issues. Periodically I have run spybot, etc., although it's been a while. There has never been any difference in XP load time or general performance with the computer at any point, not even when I recently went from one 512 chip to 1 GB dual channel memory.

I tend to suspect that for some reason, HDD access is just laggy with this system. Maybe an IRQ problem could cause this? A BIOS issue? A problem with SATA control on the motherboard?

Paul
 
which model shuttle? What anti-malware suites? do a start-run-msconfig<enter> click the startup tab and list everything in there. Also right-click the taskbar and bring up task manager. under performance what is the pf usage, the physical memory and commit charge say on both machines?
 
For anti-malware, it's the latest version of Spybot; I update regularly. However, Paul keeps FORGETTING to check on the rest of the stuff.

*nudges Dorkelf*
 
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