dell laptop, slow startup and shutdown

allan673

hi,
father in law has a dell inspiron laptop, 12 months old running windows vista.
the startup time is 4 mins and shutdown time is 2 mins.

is there anything that can be done to speed up these times please.

ran tune up utilities 2010, but the startup and shutdown times are still slow. plenty of room left on the harddrive etc.

any helps appreciated.

dogmaryxx

For starters

Download CCLEANER
http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner/download/slim
Run the CLEANER scan (UNTICK 'cookies')
Then run the REGISTRY scan (Backup the registry when it asks)

JonnyThunder

If it were my laptop, I'd do this....

1. Backup all your data onto external harddisk

2. Restore the machine back to factory settings (this is usually a disk set you will have made or been provided to reimage the machine)

3. Go through add/remove programs and remove all the pre-bundled bloatware that comes with the machine. There will be lots of it. You should leave only the stuff you want and drivers.


And if you REALLY want to speed up the machine, put on Windows 7. On all the older laptops we tested, it increased performance. It also had native drivers for most older laptops

Basil1234

have to bear with here as now running win7 now but if memory serves correct
start> run> msconfig
then opens new window goto startup tab look at progs listed that actually need to startup with computer booting up anything not sure of copy paste google and will find out what it does. amount of people that don't check there msconfig startup files as once they install a prog most auto add it into the startup files therefore slowing a machine down. also one piece of free advice vista uses twice as much memory to basically run compared to xp bare, i had a machine on xp runned on 256mb ram switched that to vista went to 512mb on same bare system.i would like to think you have a mininmum of 2gb of ram, also something else you can do to speed up startup is cleanup unused desktop icons as this also slows a machine down as these all have to load in as well.
also other things that can be done to speed a machine up is dump temp internet files, get yourself a registry cleaner like registry mechanic and finally defragment you hardrive right click one the drive itself should be in there somewhere to defrag click it run it space free is not fully important if has never been defragged and is spaced out all over the place.
also like to think you have some anti-malware software like http://filehippo.com/search?q=malwarebytes if not download hit update tab first then run full scan you will be suprised what it will find!
hope this helps you out.

Browntoa

go to control panel and then click on the system tab , it will tell you how much ram its got. If its only 1GB I would upgate it to 2gb at least but 3gb if you can afford to. Vista does crawl with only 1gb

aliEnRIK

Download MALWAREBYTES (Make sure you click 'DOWNLOAD LATEST VERSION')
http://www.filehippo.com/download_malwarebytes_anti_malware/
Open malwarebytes and goto UPDATE and click 'check for updates'. After its updated goto SCANNER and click PERFORM QUICK SCAN then click SCAN
Remove everything thats found (needs to be ticked)
Post the COMPLETE log here AFTER youve deleted everything it finds
If anything was found then do the exact same but run a FULL scan


reboot

Download HIJACK THIS (Make sure you click 'DOWNLOAD LATEST VERSION')
http://www.filehippo.com/download_hijackthis/
Click MAIN MENU then DO A SYSTEM SCAN AND SAVE A LOGFILE(Takes seconds) then post the log so we can see whats running
(do NOT do anything else with Hijack but scan and post the FULL log)
If you get a message that you cant write to the hosts file then Press the SHIFT key, and whilst holding it RIGHT CLICK and select RUN AS (admin)