T42- 320gb HD- XP incredibly slow startup

[bigking99]

A few months ago, I upgraded my T42 (2378R4U) from an 80gb HD to a 320gb, as well as upgraded the RAM from 1gb to 2gb.

Before doing this upgrade, Windows XP took about 2 minutes or so to load; immediately after the upgrade, the time jumped to about 7 minutes. Otherwise, system speed is much faster than it was before, EXCEPT for the unbearably slow startup. At the time of the upgrade, I assumed it was the 320gb that made startup slow (why would that be, though?). Only now I'm trying to do something about it.

In the next few days I plan on re-installing Windows (HD is pretty cluttered, and I have a web browser hijack that will just not go away!). I'm wondering if there's anything I can do to alleviate this ridiculously long load time. Is this normal, and something I just have to live with? I'd appreciate your input.

This is the HD I upgraded to: Western Digital WD3200BEVE 320 GB 5400RPM ATA100 8 MB 2.5-Inch Notebook Hard Drive

This is the extra RAM module I purchased: Lenovo 1GB PC2700 CL2.5 NP DDR SDRAM ( 31P9834 )

Thanks!

[killer]

Welcome to the forum!

Among the statements you made you say that you have a, "web browser hijack that will just not go away".

I'd be more concerned with that than anything else right now. It sounds as if you have a serious piece of malware lurking like Jack the Ripper and what ever you do it will emerge.

What antivrus s/w are you using. What have you tried to get rid of it? I find Avast picks up most things in a scan and the scan is relatively fast.

Have you tried Malwarebytes? Loads of people swear by it.

Anyway, good luck and report back to us.

[bigking99]

Thanks for the response. I have pretty much everything out there... Malwarebytes, Super Antispyware, Microsoft Security Essentials, Windows Defender, Ad-Aware, Spybot Search & Destroy. My antivirus is Avira Antivir, but I will try a scan with Avast like you recommend.

This is what's happening... I run scans with all of these programs, and NOTHING comes up. Then, I'll Google something. I'll click on a link, and it starts to redirect me to other sites. Have since installed the Javascript blocker thing for Firefox (to use Google now, I can't click on links- I have to 'copy link' and paste it into browser).

Every now and then, Microsoft Security Essentials will pop up with an alert- always for Virus:Win32/Alureon.F. MSE removes it. I run a scan again, just to be sure. Nothing there. A couple days later, it pops up again.

So, I just want to wipe everything clean and start over. And since I'm going to do that, I wanted to kill two birds with one stone and see if I can fix the slow loading error.

ps. I know the virus is not related to slow load up times, because the slow load up time began with a clean install of Windows, months ago. My first virus/malware problems popped up about a week ago. It's driving me nuts.

[killer]

Hmm, it seems like you have tried just about everything to find the malware. Have you run scans in Safe Mode?

Regarding the slow start up, Windows is incredibly slow compared to Linux. So much rubbish is loaded at start up, most of it not required at all.

TuneUp Utilities (which has a free trial period) allows you to investigate what starts up and you can choose to change the settings. This might knock off a few seconds ... or minutes.

That's about all I can recommend.

[RealBlackStuff]

Is DMA enabled in Device Manager/IDE ATA-ATAPI controllers/Primary IDE channel/Advanced properties?
Is this thing maybe trying to look for external network drives? That can take ages.
If so, disconnect them before you shut down.

[bigking99]

Thanks, killer- I'll check out TuneUp Utilities.

RealBlackStuff- this is what the current settings are in Advanced Properties of the Primary IDE Channel:

Device 0:
Device Type: "Auto Detection" (grayed out; can't change it)
Transfer Mode: "DMA if available" (the other option is "PIO Only")
Current Transfer Mode: "Ultra DMA Mode 5"

Device 1:
Device Type: "Auto Detection" (other option is "None")
Transfer Mode: "DMA if available" (the other option is "PIO Only")
Current Transfer Mode: "Not Applicable"

I really don't know what these settings mean- can you advise?

Also noticed that the driver date is 7/1/2001. I guess I should update.

Not sure if this matters, but for the Secondary IDE Channel, the settings are exactly the same as above, except that for Device 0, Current Transfer Mode is "Ultra DMA Mode 2."

More stuff that might be relevant: grouped under "IDE/ATAPI Controllers" in Device Manager along with Primary & Secondary IDE Channels, is "Intel 82801DBM Ultra ATA Storage Controller - 24CA." The driver date for this is 7/2/2001. Maybe I should update these drivers and see what happens.

I don't have any external network drives. My T42 just has the one 320gb HD, and I connect wirelessly to my DSL router for web browsing.

Thanks guys!

[craigmontHunter]

Something like this happened to my families desktop, and we solved it by running a chkdisk. it took about 2 hours, and now it is back to full speed.

Good luck

[RealBlackStuff]

Your DMA settings are fine, the first one (Primary, Device 0) is for the hard disk, and the second one (Secondary, Device 0) is for whatever you have in the Ultrabay drive (CD/DVD or 2nd HD).
Don't bother to update those drivers, they are fine, and haven't changed in years.

You could try switching off the Indexing of the hard disk. In Windows Explorer, rightclick the hard disk, select Properties, and UNtick the "Allow Indexing..." at the bottom. When asked, include subdirectories, and ignore any unaccessible files/errors.
Repeat this for each partition if you have more than one.
It may take a while (if there is a lot on the HD) before it is finished, so go drink a pint of the Black Stuff, a coffee or whatever...
In most cases that speeds up things tremendously.

[bigking99]

craigmontHunter- thanks for the chkdisk suggestion. I had tried that already (disk was error-free), but I do recommend chkdisk to everyone who has "weird" stuff going on with their computer. About a year ago, I tried opening Control Panel-Add/Remove Programs. The list of programs just wouldn't populate (even after 6 hours). I decided, hey, might as well run chkdisk (search for bad sectors/auto fix errors). There were a couple errors that it found and fixed, and voila, Add/Remove Programs worked immediately after that.

RealBlackStuff- un-indexing definitely knocked off 30 sec or so on startup. I rarely use the search function anyway. Thanks for the suggestion. I definitely enjoy the Black Stuff, it's my favorite beer, I've even had it at the brewery. Cheers!

killer- thanks so much for the TuneUp Utilities suggestion! I'll admit, I'm pretty skeptical of so called 'tune-up' programs (I feel like the ones from say 8 or 9 years ago were absolutely useless, and I haven't tried any since then), but this fixed a lot of stuff, and it has a great interface. Start up time is now 3 minutes! Huge improvement. I'll definitely be buying the full version.

It even fixed a few security holes. I can't find a list of what those were... one of them had something to do with "SYN" (not sure what that is). I have antivirus, antimalware, etc., but are there any good programs that do an actual security analysis, and close any open doors so to speak?

Thanks again for your help guys!

[SJRoome]

Hi

To find your security problem try downloading and running Hijackthis.


Steve

[Tasurinchi]

In the next few days I plan on re-installing Windows

Well, my experience with all Windows versions is that after a couple of years the system will be so bloated that you will need to do a reinstall. Independently of a machine being a notebook or a desktop. In my case I cannot remember any of my desktops working more than 2 years without a new install.

I don't think that your new drive has a problem, but in case you don't want to do a clean install yet, I would recommend you to try a live CD or (USB stick) with a popular linux distro like Ubuntu, Fedora core, Mint, Suse or any other you may like. Just to check if it's a hardware or software issue.

(One more tip from my side. Normally I create separate partitions for the OS and the data, so new installs will not erase any of my existing data. I even started using many portable programs that do not require an install. You just need to copy them anywhere out of the OS partition.)

Just my 0.02 cents!

Cheers

Edit: I also have the same 320GB as yours in my X31 and it rocks!!