XP painfully slow to boot

Jolly_Roger

Over Christmas, my two daughters came home from uni and made some use of my HP Compaq 6715b laptop, which runs XP. While now more than 5-6 years old, and despite having some small eccentricities, it has always worked fine. However, now the offspring has fled, the laptop now takes an eternity to boot - often some 30 minutes from power on to opening Firefox! What on earth can be causing this? Has it received a knock? Would that affect performance quite in the way I'm noticing?

And does anybody know how I might get it back to working correctly?

Many thanks for your help.

Gyro

Maybe you should try doing a 'System Restore' in 'Safe Mode' and going back to a restore point made BEFORE the kids came back from Uni.

It won't affect any personal files you've made up until now - it'll just revert the System files.

You can access 'Safe Mode' by slowly tapping F8 as the computer is starting up - then you can access 'System Restore' by typing RSTRUI in the 'Run' box on bottom left of desktop and pressing ENTER key.

Best done as an Administrator.

cynicalgit_2

Have you cleared out the caches? It's obviously been set to open applications on boot up it wasn't running before.
Delete recent caches and as above restore to earlier point.

matttye

Before restoring you might just want to check what's running on startup. Go to start > run > type in 'msconfig' then look in the startup tab.

Is there lots of programs starting there?

JJ_Egan

Back of my mid is that their is a boot up tool from ms for xp .
Run at boot and it checks and its probably on the MS site .

waddler_8

https://support.microsoft.com/kb/316434

Jolly_Roger

Thank you everybody for your help.

I missed all but the first two replies first time around simply because I couldn't get into the machine!

However, as suggested, I undertook a system restore, going through Safe Mode and Administrator. It took FOREVER to complete, but has - touch wood - been a complete success and the old XP has recovered from its stroke!

I didn't get the opportunity to know which programs were running on start up, but how on earth could the computer have gone from working so sensibly to working so ridiculously slowly in such a short time? I know we often press buttons by mistake and have things happen on screen that we didn't plan, but to have the computer so down so much so easily seems weird.

Any idea of how that might have come about so I can avoid it happening in future?

Thanks again!

matttye

Jolly_Roger wrote: »

Thank you everybody for your help.

I missed all but the first two replies first time around simply because I couldn't get into the machine!

However, as suggested, I undertook a system restore, going through Safe Mode and Administrator. It took FOREVER to complete, but has - touch wood - been a complete success and the old XP has recovered from its stroke!

I didn't get the opportunity to know which programs were running on start up, but how on earth could the computer have gone from working so sensibly to working so ridiculously slowly in such a short time? I know we often press buttons by mistake and have things happen on screen that we didn't plan, but to have the computer so down so much so easily seems weird.

Any idea of how that might have come about so I can avoid it happening in future?

Thanks again!

Impossible to say, as one program can slow a computer to a standstill.

Anti viruses, whilst good, are a perfect example. Many computers are slow while scans are running.

Gyro

"Any idea of how that might have come about so I can avoid it happening in future?"

Hmmmmmm!

Well I don't think it's a coincidence that your trusty old XP's demise happened just at the time that your daughters returned home from Uni. :eek:

They've probably plugged in USB sticks from Uni complete with malware loads. It's one of the commonest ways of getting infected. Or perhaps they've been getting emails from their mates with movies of cats playing pianos etc. Another common malware route.

A pound to a penny it's something to do with them.

I rest my case M'Lud.

EDIT

You might be well advised to create a Restore Point next time just BEFORE they return home, so you KNOW you have a clean point to restore FROM when they go back.