Very Slow Boot on T520

[scanfield]

My T520 takes approximately 2 minutes to boot to the desktop. I'm starting my timer from the time my finger swipe is accepted (shortly after POST) until I have a desktop. This seems excessive.

Before I head down the wipe-and-reinstall-a-bare-OS trail, is there anything I should look for?

I've already verified the obvious things like checking for malware and looking at the startup programs in msconfig but nothing jumps out.

[ZaZ]

Maybe you want to run the PC-Doctor diagnostic on your hard drive. Which hard drive do you have?

[scanfield]

I have the 320 GB drive. Not sure how fast it spins, but I'm guessing it's 5400 rpm. I've only installed a couple of applications since I got it, so it's almost empty. I also ran SpinRite on it, and that finished without any errors.

I'm going to try disabling the fingerprint reader in the BIOS. I've been reading that they are really USB devices and they can take up to 10 seconds to initialize. It's not much of a difference, but it's a start.

I've always bought Dell machines, so I'm pretty used to reformatting machines after I get them. I didn't think I would need to do that with the Lenovo, but the more I dig, the more crappy software I find. I just disabled a DRM service named Protexis that was installed with all the Corel trialware that I've never used. There are still 84 other services running and that seems like a lot.

[sysiphus]

I have the 320 GB drive. Not sure how fast it spins, but I'm guessing it's 5400 rpm.

Hmm, that would be a disappointment and surprise--Lenovo put a 7200RPM WD Scorpio Black in mine (320GB base drive option).

[scanfield]

I was just guessing 5400. I really don't know what it is, but either way, my boot time is more than 2x what I think it should be.

[scanfield]

I installed Soluto (very cool software) and it showed me where all the time was going on startup. It turns out that Microsoft's anti-malware package is taking almost 30 seconds to get rolling. Other than that, it's mostly stuff out of my control.

I followed Soluto's recommendations and cut my boot up time by about 50 seconds. To get below that I have to get rid of a bunch of things that take a second or less to start. In other words, the diminishing returns mean I'm about as low as I can go.