Paul wrote:
>My HP media center PC takes about 5 minutes to boot up.>>


1. You don't mention startups, which are a common cause of slow booting. 
Slow boot nearly always = bad performance.

Run Msconfig or any good startup manager and disable everything (it won't 
let you disable anything essential).

Then reboot and see if there's any difference. If all is now well, it's 
then trial and error with some educated guessing to identify the culprits. 
This can be a bit tricky to pin down if it's a combination of programs, 
each of which alone may be perfectly OK.

HP's come with a lot of proprietary junk preloaded---the first thing I'd do 
is to get rid of all that. Sometimes it doesn't want to live happily with 
anything not made by HP.

Turning software off in Task Manager won't make much difference. Once some 
software is loaded into memory, it won't always release that memory. And 
(see below) the cause of your problem is almost certainly a bad driver not 
loading properly. This likely won't show up in Task Manager or even in 
Process Manager.

2. It would help to know if this is a sudden problem, or whether it's 
deteriorated gradually over time. Have you tried System Restore? How old is 
the computer? Maybe it's due for a reformat.

3. Overheating could be a problem--check that all fans and working and 
clean, with good ventilation. Download Speedfan if necessary and let it 
monitor vital heat points. It will show red arrows if anything is hotter 
than it should be.

4. The clue really is that it boots normally into Safe Mode---I assume you 
mean within 40-60 seconds. That has to point to something having trouble 
loading at startup which is continuing to create a conflict. It could be a 
combination of items, not just one single item. Have you installed any 
printers or other hardware just before this trouble started?

5. Open Admin tools/Services and disable indexing service. There are a few 
cases where this is reported to slow performance drastically. Also disable 
Task Scheduler---though you'll need to enable it again to run Bootvis (see 
6). Reboot.

6. Download Bootvis from Microsoft. This is a free boot visualizer which 
will analyse what is causing boot problems. It's nearly always a driver of 
some sort (a .sys or .ocx file). Read the instructions carefully, as it 
requires some services to be enabled before it will run. Bootvis also 
contains a boot optimizer which can be quite effective sometimes, though 
you still need to find out where the delays are occurring.

7. Download free Process Explorer (also Microsoft I think) which will show 
you what is running and using resources in real time. Won't help you though 
if there's a sticky driver which won't fully load.

8. You seem to have eliminated the possibility of malware---but keep an eye 
on your internet connection icon. If this is active when it shouldn't be, 
it still could be something trying to "phone home" and tying up your 
computer resources.

9. If it's a sudden problem, you might be able to link it to an automatic 
update if you use them.

10 I assume you've already run Chkdsk to check the HD integrity.

Don Penlington

 From the Beach at Surfers Paradise in sunny Queensland.
Computer tutorials, local scenery,  and other things at my website:
http://users.tpg.com.au/deepend/index1.html

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