Laptop takes a long time to fully boot up

[David Rupert]

I have a Dell laptop. Windows 7. 64 bits.
It's around 3-4 years old. Well taken care of!

It takes much longer to boot up, than it use to.
I usually start it, then walk away for 5 minutes. Then it's
ready to roll.

What does this sound like?

Disc scan?
Disc cleanup?

Sure hope it's okay!!??

Thanks!

[David Rupert]

Oh yeah. It is only 1% fragmented.

[Jack Stoner]

What is in the startup? Too much in there or programs that are doing something at startup, such as an antivirus scan, can cause slow boot.

Do a "diagnostic startup" just to see how long that takes as it bypasses a lot that is in the Boot/Startup.

Click the start "orb" and then enter msconfig in the search window then press enter and the system configuration panel will come up. Click on the diagnostic startup and then Apply (see screen shot below). Restart the PC and see how long it takes.

[David Rupert]

Thanks Jack!

I'll check this out for sure. I do have Norton Internet Security running.

Dave

[Dave Potter]

I personally suspect a driver issue, but 3-4 years is a l-o-o-o-o-o-n-n-n-g time for all sorts of mischief to accumulate in your computer's registry, due to bad/incomplete software installs/uninstalls, etc.

One thing I'd do, if only prophylactically, would be to download and run Freeware Registry Cleaner Power Tools Lite and get all the unnecessary stuff that's accumulated over the years out of there. I've been a user of their paid JV16 Power Tools product for close to a decade now, and it's the best PC hygiene product out there, IMO. It's safe and effective, and you have backups of everything you do as a fallback security measure, though I've never had to use one in all the years I've used it.

I'd also ditch the Norton bloatware and use the perfectly acceptable and free built-in Windows firewall. Then I'd download and use the free anti-virus software Microsoft Security Essentials. I used Symantec and Norton products years ago, but ultimately concluded they're an unnecessary expense, as well as being intrusive and cpu-intensive.

[Ken Lang]

I downloaded the Registry cleaner yesterday in my old 8300 that has a lot of stuff on it. The hard drive was deleted and redone about 2 years ago.
The fix provided by Power tools made it run faster.
I will try my other computers as time goes on, including my old HP laptop which is slower than molasses. Thanks for the tip.

[Dale Gray]

How much ram does it have? 2 Gig is the minimum.