I am running Windows 2000 Pro and Server on multiple computers and have
been for over a year. I haven't timed this but it should not take more then
a 2 or three  minutes to boot up or shut down. I am just guessing but my
Server takes a couple of minutes to do this...certainly nothing close to 5
minutes. Are you trying to load up a lot of programs when you start up or
some kind of monitoring utility that is causing a slow down?

First thing to do is stop anything that is unneeded from auto loading at
startup. Look in your  C:\Documents and Settings folder ...you should see
Administrator..... All Users....Default Users. Each one will have a START
MENU folder which will have a Program\Startup folder. Any shortcut in those
Startup folders will auto load so remove them...temporarily put them in
another folder so you can put them back if you need to.

  Next you can use a utility like PCMAGs free StartUp Manager to see what
is auto starting from the registry and ini files. You can also use StartUp
Manager to remove the unwanted entries. You will find this utility at the
PCMAG web site in the free utilities section.

On the other hand it may be taking so long to load and shutdown because it
is trying to resolve a conflict or install a device that wasn't properly
setup in the first place. This is what I suspect.

What they told you about a SoundBlaster PCI card is not true. I am running
a PCI Soundblaster Live Value under Windows 2000 Pro Service Pack 2. My
guess is that they did not install the drivers for the card. Windows 2000
has no default drivers for A SB Live. Windows 2000 often requires third
party drivers for devices. This is common knowledge and is not unusual. If
you go to Creative's web site you will be able to download the Windows 2000
drivers for your SB card. Download them, run the setup program and the
drivers should install. Once installed your sound should return unless
there is some kind of hardware conflict.

The PC should never have been given back to you in this condition ....I
hope they didn't charge you too much to perform the upgrade! I think the
best thing you could do is to find yourself some competent and
knowledgeable help to set up Windows 2000 correctly.

Rode
The NOSPIN Group

At 03:35 PM 8/13/2001 -0500, you wrote:
>I recently had my computer upgraded from 450Mghz to 1000Mghz and then
>had the hard drive reformated and Windows2000 Professional Installed, along
>with some other software. I also have 256K of memory. I'm wondering if the
>following is a problem.
>It takes an awful long time for my PC to boot up(between 5 and 10 minutes)
>and even longer to shutdown(between 10 and 15 minutes).
>If I'm up and running and I do a restart, it takes a solid 15 to 20
>minutes to go through the shutdown and reboot cycle.
>While booting, it gets to the point where the little bar is moving from
>left to right. It gets almost to the end and just sits there. You can't
>really tell what it's doing since it just sits on that one screen. Is there a
>way to tell what it's doing? Same question during shutdown.
>Is this
>  normal under this operating system? If not, could it have something to
>do with my upgrade? Is there anything I can do to improve the startup and
>shutdown time?
>Also, I was told that Windows2000 Professional is incompatible with
>Soundblaster AudioPCI. It seems to be true because I have no sound. Are there
>any driver files that I can download to make my soundcard is compatible, or
>do I just need to get a new compatible soundcard?
>
>Thanks for any help you can give me.

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