pc took an age to log on...

donnajunkie

should i be worried that my pc took an absolute age to log on today. i actually got impatient and turned it off and started again. it got to the part were the screen is black and the cursor is on screen and movable and just stayed there. i am talking more than 10 or 15 minutes before i lost my patience.

pcombo

have you recently changed any settings or added new software etc.

donnajunkie

pcombo wrote: »

have you recently changed any settings or added new software etc.

no. i get updates all the time though. a security update for internet explorer 8 was installed yesterday.

penrhyn

Have you defragged your hard drive lately, decrapped your PC with Ccleaner, and run Antimalware and Antivirus scans?
If still slow have a look at your startup files.

donnajunkie

penrhyn wrote: »

Have you defragged your hard drive lately, decrapped your PC with Ccleaner, and run Antimalware and Antivirus scans?
If still slow have a look at your startup files.

i use ccleaner but i dont tick everything in the list because i dont know what alot of it is. i just have things like temporary internet files ticked. i have ran malwarebytes and it found nothing. windows defender is in the middle of one of its automatic scans. i do also have kaspersky for security. i dont know how to defrag a hard drive.

penrhyn

OK, it may help if you are running XP. XP has a disk defragmenter programme in system Accessories.
Personally I'd download defraggler, its from the ccleaner people, you can find it here.

http://www.piriform.com/defraggler/download

PS If you have never defragmented your hard drive it could take a while.

PPS I've always run ccleaner with its default settings, never had a problem.

donnajunkie

penrhyn wrote: »

OK, it may help if you are running XP. XP has a disk defragmenter programme in system Accessories.
Personally I'd download defraggler, its from the ccleaner people, you can find it here.

http://www.piriform.com/defraggler/download

PS If you have never defragmented your hard drive it could take a while.

PPS I've always run ccleaner with its default settings, never had a problem.

i'm on vista. i will have a look at that link.

donnajunkie

i've got the defragger working at the moment. i thought it would free up room but it seems to be gradually reducing the free space on the hard drive as it progresses. at the start 40.8gb of files were fragmented.

Altahost

How many times do I hear this word defrag?. FAT32/16 needs defrag. NTFS, your system needs little if any defrag since the Vista Disc Management maintains file length, associations and allocoation of space and believe me it's far more intelligent than ccleaner or any other free "Clean It" software.

Your initial question was relating to a one time incident and you never said when you restarted Vista if it started normally or was still very slow.

Start up is a sequence.

Initiate BIOS
Deliver BIOS Data to Windows Management
Windows Management checks Last Saved Settings
Once Saved Settings are loaded, Get Profiles (Usernames+user settings)
Login Screen
Desktop commands
Vista Loaded OK

So what can slow start up?

Usually something that is being written to the registry like an update or hardware installation.

Windows CLI writing New security at System Access Management level.

Incorrect shutdown where windows cannot bring the last settings because of corruption

A virus or Spy/Malware.

Personally, I would try a restore point selecting a date from the options that is prior to the trouble starting. You will lose no data but any update, hardware installation will be lost. Please not that if your PC is infected with one of the more maliciaos spys, restore may not be available. Please contact and engineer

donnajunkie

ok, the defrag ran for 5 hours and was still knowhere near finishing. so i cancelled it. a big reason was due to the process i have now somehow lost 23gb of freespace from my hard drive. i had 185gb free when it started and now i have 167gb.
does anyone know if or how i can get that 23gb back?
i thought i would get this posted now before i go to bed in the hope that someone will have been able to help by the time i log in tomorrow as i am quite concerned about it.

Altahost

Hi,

Feel free to contact me Donna. I can help you here. Trust me, defrag will do little to improve performance. The memory loss is not a loss, its a datafile written incorrectly and reporting wrongly.