TSGL: Extremely slow booting

[H Davis]

Heidi,

Maybe you can get your friend to at least count the number of icons that 
show up in the system tray. That's the area between the "<" and the 
clock in the lower right corner of the screen. She might have to click 
on the "<" to get all the icons exposed. If she rests her mouse over 
each icon, without clicking, a "tool tip" should show up with a clue 
about what it's for. That, too, would be helpful.

This might allow you to determine if the problem is really coming from 
too many programs loading at startup.

It might also help to know what kind of machine she has and what 
operating system. A bonus would be how much memory does it have. Perhaps 
your diplomatic skills can get "husband" to click on Start, then _right_ 
click on My Computer, click on Properties then select the General tab. 
The operating system details are at the top and the processor speed and 
amount of memory are at the bottom.

The "Norton Pack with firewall and antivirus software" doesn't sound 
promising. Norton, in all its flavors, is a notorious resource hog.

Your friend at least has some defenses in place but is she updating the 
AV software etc? If your friend is as computer unaware as you indicate, 
there's a chance the machine is infected with multiple bad stuff which 
will cause the behavior you describe. But because she has the Norton 
Suite I'm going to keep a good thought and not jump on that right away.

Need a lot more info.

H Davis


Heidi Schröder wrote:
> Hi everybody,
>
>
>
> once again I am trying to solve a problem for my friend - she does know 
> absolutely nothing about the technical side of a computer. Her husband 
> obviously is not much better but is willing to follow how to work out things 
> when it is written down clearly.
>
>
>
> Now by chance I came to know that their computer does take roughly 10 
> minutes to boot up after being completely switched off and about 5 minutes 
> even to wake up from Standby mode (seems that has been this way always or 
> for a long time already at least). It is Windows XP for sure, home edition 
> is my guess and I hope they are doing all updates as well. I know for sure 
> they are using Internet Explorer (probably still 6, as my friend did not 
> mention any problems with a new view of Internet Explorer) and they are 
> using some Norton Pack with firewall and antivirus software. Lately the 
> computer became very slow in general so I have told them to do a general 
> clean-up which obviously did work as by now my friend can write her mails 
> without the terrible delay she had then. But I have really no idea what 
> programme to advise them for to check the start-up folder which was my first 
> guess for the long delay. I mean, all such programmes I came to know so far, 
> usually are not really good for you when you do not know quite a bit about 
> the programmes you have installed and all that.
>
>
>
> As I can't imagine there can be that much in the start-up folder to slow the 
> computer down that badly - are there any other problems that can slow the 
> computer down at booting that much?
>
>
>
> I know it is the usual difficult bit and I ask for a lot of guessing, but 
> please do it - I will not get more information from my friend as she does 
> not want to get into the computer stuff more than absolutely necessary  and 
> her husband will not talk to me, the person who does know all computer 
> things better usually.
>
>
>
> Have a nice day
>
> Heidi
>
>
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-- 
H Davis   hdavis1 at gmail.com