Member Avatar for mahela007

I have a new PC which I've been using for about 9 months with windows XP. However, since of late, the time it takes to load all the startup programs has become quite long.. i.e the time between when I click the login icon and when the system actually becomes usable after loading all the startup programs.
I haven't installed any new software recently, that is, before I noticed an increase in startup time so I don't want to delete any startup programs.
Could it be something like temporary internet files?

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by abu taher

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This thread from describes a clear change: the desktop is taking much longer to become usable after login even though no new programs were installed. Advice from and about checking RAM and startup items is a good start, but a few less-obvious causes often explain a recent, sudden slowdown: service/driver timeouts, disk problems, user-profile corruption, network- or printer-related timeouts, or an antivirus/service that stalls at logon.

If the System Configuration Utility message keeps appearing after disabling items with msconfig, it can be hidden without re-enabling the disabled entries. When that dialog appears after a reboot, check the box labeled "Don't show this message or launch the System Configuration Utility when Windows starts" and click OK. That stops the warning while leaving Selective Startup in effect.

Practical triage (in order of low risk to higher-impact actions):

  • Check Event Viewer (eventvwr.msc) -> System/Application for errors or service timeouts at the logon time — those entries point to the offending service/driver.
  • Test with Safe Mode and a new local user account to see whether the delay is global (hardware/driver) or profile-specific.
  • Audit autostarts with Autoruns (Sysinternals) to find things msconfig misses (scheduled tasks, drivers, shell extensions).
  • Look for mapped network drives or network printers that are unreachable — Windows waits on those.
  • Run sfc /scannow and schedule chkdsk /r on next boot if the Event Viewer or tests suggest disk trouble (backup important data first).
  • Temporarily disable third-party antivirus or security software for testing only.

Suggested quick plan: back up critical files, run the Event Viewer check, compare Safe Mode vs normal boot and a test user, use Autoruns to disable suspicious entries, then run disk and system-file checks. If the slowdown persists even in Safe Mode and a fresh user profile, focus on disk/driver diagnostics or vendor HDD tests.

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Member Avatar for praven

I had a slow boot problem as well. I would suggest you first check if you have too many programs loading at boot or if you dont have enough RAM. I was also able to improve boot by running a complete defrag. (Run a diskcleanup before that if you need to)

Member Avatar for mahela007

Hm.. I disabled some startup programs using Msconfig but now every time I start up, I get a message from windows saying some programs have been disabled and that MsConfig is running in some particular mode. How do I fix this (without re-enabling the startup programs)

Member Avatar for mahela007

Bump..
Hmm.. I gave up trying to use Msconfig. All the startup programs in there were there from the day I got my PC. that is, there are no new startup programs that were installed recently. Therefore, I don't believe it's simple the startup programs that are making start up slow.

Member Avatar for abu taher

use msconfig. start run and write msconfig. then from startup tab unchecked program what you don't need. I didn't face any problem what mahela said. some program start with start windows. so you can disable it.

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