5 minute startup on new T60 - suggestions?

[AceyMan]

Guys- I just took delivery of a 2613CTO (T7200 C2D, 100/7200 HDD, 1GB (1DIMM.. for now) 15" IPS SXGA+, Radeon X1400, IBM 802.11 a/b/g w. Bluetooth, no WWAN).

The installed OS was XP Home, but out of the box I removed all the trialware I knew I didn't need and then did an in place upgrade to XP Pro SP2 with Volume media. That went AOK with no problems. Then I put Office 2007 on, and a few other essentials (graphics viewer, Nero, Firefox.)

The system run's great except for this -- at boot the system comes up in normal time, I can logon (using the FP reader) and the desktop comes up pretty quickly. But the HDD stays occupied for at least 5 minutes, and in the mean time the system is unresponsive. The mouse moves, and the keyboard lights (Caps Lock, etc) respond, but until the disk activity stops I can't do anything. Once its settled down, the system is sweet. The event log doesn't show anything abnormal, but I have a feeling something in the stock package is a resource hog.

I did make a pretty big (5GB) Security volume with the Security software, and think maybe de-crypting this is part of the long delay? That's just a wild guess, though.

If anyone has a suggestions for other components to remove or where else to look I'd appreciate it.

In a couple of day's I'll have the extra 1GB stick of RAM and I'll see how that helps.

Other than that, it's a boss machine.

[TPA]

Yes the preload is an albatross. Here's a clean install that uses your own key so you don't need to buy a new one.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=161612

I did it and I only use power management, and shock protection from the thinkvantage suite, anything more and the hard drive goes nuts trying to load all that stuff up, do all the checks for updates, check for problems....etc. The less you install the better.

burn your recovery disks first or use a different hard drive.

[furrycute]

What kind of antivirus do you have installed?

I have Norton, and I do notice a significant difference in load time with and without Norton.

[GomJabbar]

Here is a similar recent thread from the X6x series forum.

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=48552

[chiral]

Google "Microsoft Bootvis" It is a no longer officially supported utility that organizes the preload area of the XP boot. It cuts boot time of newly installed XP systems typically in half.

[mattbiernat]

you mostly have to get rid of start up apps, disable security (fingerprint, the chip, etc) if you don't need it. you can also disable some services especially the useless ones such as Windows Media player, etc... Oh yeah and send norton back to hell, where it belongs.

[ibm meister]

I leave my t60 2623-d6u on standby all the time... no start up problems at all. Reboot now and then

[AceyMan]

Update: I bit the bullet and took TPA's advise and did a fresh install. Once the system comes up to the desktop it's just a few seconds from there and it's ready to go.

It was a PITA getting all the drivers and mystery missing devices installed (..which is why I try to avoid doing bare reloads on laptops), but the system is running as expected now.

I've got a few other issues that I'll post separately if I can't figure them out, but things on the fresh install are generally very good.

Thanks for the input, everyone!

[crashnburn]

Interesting