Insanely slow XP boot...?

A

Alex41290

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Feb 20, 2004
Messages
1,570
Okay, before anyone posts telling me to use google or something else, I'd just like to point out that I went to www.tweakxp.com and www.blackviper.com and did all of the tweaks involving disabling services and improving boot speeds, and whatnot. Now, this is what happens: everything is fine and dandy, it boots up to the automatic logon, and it works like a charm. After this, it loads the desktop and sits there, for >1 minute with my HDD access light on the WHOLE time. Now, as i said, i have tried all kinds of tweaks and stuff, and nothing has worked. It finally shows the little hourglass next to the pointer, and then, after about another minute, and then, after about 2:30 minutes of sitting there, it begins to load the system tray, one by one, and it takes each icon about 20-30 seconds to show up, and i only have 5 icons!!! Please help me, its not a HUGE deal, but its kind of annoying having to wait like 8 minutes for my computer to boot. My system is in my sig.


Thanks,

alex
 
Did you load any chipset drivers for your board soon after installing windows? Are your HDDs running in DMA mode? I wouldn't follow any of blackviper's suggestions...they don't always seem to work very well.
 
Undo everything you did as a result of blackviper.com (quackviper thread of the week), that site screws up more people's machines.... grrr... Report back afterwards, that may not resolve the problem, but if you have chagned your install that far off the base, we may not be able to help much w/o being in front of the machine.
 
yes DMA is enabled, and no, i didn't install any chipset drivers soon after my windows install...thanks for the help, anything else?

would disabling DMA work?


alex
 
well, i didn't do his tweaks, but i did the services and stuff, and any time it said it couldn't do something because of a disable service, i just enabled it again and all was well...

why do u guys hate him so much? or do u just hate his work?
 
His work is utter crap. I couldn't care less about him personally, though his writing does come off as if he were pretentious. His complete misinformation about what services are, what they do, and how they interact with the operating system in general is the bane to all developers and support personell who actually care about things working.
 
It sounds like services aren't the problem; you had the same thing happen with and without them. Have you checked the event viewer to see if there's anything there?
 
YOU DISABLED THE PLUG AND PLAY SERVICE

edit: btw blackviper is a fucking idiot.
 
Alex41290 said:
no, i didn't install any chipset drivers soon after my windows install
Click to expand...


Well, you were supposed to. This has a huge effect on the drive access speeds. I would suggest immediately loading the latest ones. Not sure if yours in an Nvidia or a Via chipset, but if you built the system, you should know.
 
i was having the same issue....maybe a contributing factor would be some sort of third party visual style program, do you use one?
 
Alex41290 said:
well, i didn't do his tweaks, but i did the services and stuff, and any time it said it couldn't do something because of a disable service, i just enabled it again and all was well...

why do u guys hate him so much? or do u just hate his work?
Click to expand...
He spreads misinformation. If you hang around here enough you will see some of his 'work' in play. Do a search for quackviper. It's a PIA when your troubleshooting a machine with disabled services, esp when the poster doesn't inform you.

Best of all see my sig., it's a perfect example why he doesn't give enough information for you to make the decision to disable a given service. There are few services that are 'safe' to disable, but he lists many.

He also tells people to disable a service, when at best, it should be set to manual.
 
Despite many, many posts to the contrary, there's nothing wrong with Blackviper, and there's nothing wrong with disabling services. I have a PILE of services disabled on my machine...never had one, single solitary problem. SP2 installed fine, Windows Update works fine...everything works fine. It doesn't seem like your problem has anything to do with services...again, your post indicated (unless I read it wrong) that the problem was there before you disabled anything. It sounds like something is timing out, or something is taking it's time loading.
 
If you didn't install the chipset drivers, it's best to do that now. I saw an increase using drivers of my own chipset. And I doubt disabling services would slow you down. Despite on the hate on Blackviper ala Quackviper, his "tweaks" aren't really harmful at all though it spreads misinformation. He didn't really do much research except tell you his first hand experience with each and one of those services and some people say that he ripped off sources from other 'misinformed' sites which worsens the "truth" (which are actually partial truth or even completely false).

-J.
 
Same old advice, but have you thoroughly checked you pc for spyware? There is one son of a bitch spyware/trojan hybrid called "CoolWebSearch or CWS which I have just recently seen cause extremely extended boot up times in many peoples pc's over the past few weeks.

Best way to take a look it to post a hijackthis log. The CWS crapware can be very very difficult to remove and usually requires a combination of antispyware tools and judicious hijackthis editing.

As well as a virus scan, since some variants install trojans.

Fun stuff.

Al it takes to get it is to hit the wrong website with IE.
 
CWS is a pain, but just wait until you have to deal with virtual bouncer. :rolleyes:

This awesome piece of spyware downloads OTHER SPYWARE!!! Including CWS.

:mad:

Oh, and I have yet to see a spyware install w/o user action or severly poor IE settings.
 
TUNEXP might help .
http://www.driverheaven.net/dforce/default.php

It has a 2 defragers for bootup
1) boot files defrager
2) this rearranges the boot files for quicker boot
and unlike quessing ,this works .



Back in the day ,there was an urgency to ,
Disable Windows Plug n' Play Support
what the deal was ,Microsoft revealed that the hackers at,
eEye had discovered multiple critical security flaws,
in all versions of Windows using Universal Plug and Play:
that tuned the ritual of shuting it down a thing to do .
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/MS01-059.mspx

But they patched it ,and we went on.. i think alot of it because things
that were problems in alot of these sites like B/V just don't get updated.

It's been about 2 years since I've been to B/V site ,but I recall he has a
area there that has autoreg entries,and i have told people to go there
before,but what I am trying to say is ,he has 1 or 2 auto reg. that restores
all services to XP home default,XP PRO to services default.Since you've
been there might as well go back ,or do a 20 min XP repair with your CD.
 
ok, i know for a fact that i have CWS, and i don't know how it got there, nor how to get rid of it...and i also just installed my chipset drivers like yesterday, and it seemed to speed up a good amount....now to get rid of CoolWebSearch.....


thanks a bunch guys, you have been a great help,

alex
 
look in device manager and "show hidden devices" if it shows network cards in there thet you do not use, or multiple instances of the one you do use(but only one working one). windows can boot slow as it tries to connect all those non existant network cards. all you need are the ones thet are not greyed out, just uninstall all the "unatached" ones if there are any

be careful not to uninstall ones that are not greyed out even if you do not think you have that device, sometimes various types of drivers show up there as virtual devices and if you delete them strange and often bad things can happen..

after that, and defragging. you can run bootvis from microsoft. it has a graph which shows what drivers and programs are taking too long to boot. then you can replace,reinstall or remove whatever is causing the problem and try it again.

heres a screenshot
http://www.softpedia.com/progScreenshots/BootVis-Screenshot-3465.html
you can get the file from there as well, since you can't get it from microsoft website anymore

Just dont bother with its "optimise" thing, just run the visualisation part to find out what is causing the delay.

AFTER you have fixed your problem go ahead and use tuneXP it will make it boot even faster :)
 
Don't use Bootvis for other than viewing the graphs. Bootvis is already automated in Windows XP. It will load quicker to the programs you use most. If you run Photoshop for the first time within a boot, it will run slow but once you do the same 2 boots later, you will notice how quicker it becomes. And if you leave your computer on overnight, bootvis works as well.

-J.
 
MOC said:
Back in the day ,there was an urgency to ,
Disable Windows Plug n' Play Support
what the deal was ,Microsoft revealed that the hackers at,
eEye had discovered multiple critical security flaws,
in all versions of Windows using Universal Plug and Play:
that tuned the ritual of shuting it down a thing to do .
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/MS01-059.mspx

But they patched it ,and we went on.. i think alot of it because things
that were problems in alot of these sites like B/V just don't get updated.

It's been about 2 years since I've been to B/V site ,but I recall he has a
area there that has autoreg entries,and i have told people to go there
before,but what I am trying to say is ,he has 1 or 2 auto reg. that restores
all services to XP home default,XP PRO to services default.Since you've
been there might as well go back ,or do a 20 min XP repair with your CD.
Click to expand...

FYI: UnPnP has nothing to do with regular Plug and Play functionality. It is a completely different feature. You can safely disable UnPnP and still have full Plug and Play support.
In fact, if you arent using UnPnP, I say disable it. I dont care if its been patched, it has been exploited once and can probably be exploited again. The default setting is Manual.

As far as services go, the default settings for all the services can be found in the Help section of the services management console.. Help - Concepts - Default Settings
 
-freon- said:
FYI: UnPnP has nothing to do with regular Plug and Play functionality. It is a completely different feature. You can safely disable UnPnP and still have full Plug and Play support.
In fact, if you arent using UnPnP, I say disable it. I dont care if its been patched, it has been exploited once and can probably be exploited again. The default setting is Manual.
Click to expand...
FYI: if the service is set to manual, it can't be exploited unless a dumbass runs something that turns it on, in which case a whole list of other daemons on the OS take far more precedence when it comes to virus-writers and trojans. Also, if a service is set to "atuomatic," it does not necessarily mean it is running or accessible by anyone without proper credentials (in other words, if it can be exploited, you've already been owned, bud).

Just an FYI. If you're paranoid, turn it to manual and you're fine.
 
well, thanks everyone for the help...i guess i kind of fixed it, somehow? but now it takes just as long at the xp boot logo (it goes at least 8 times) but then windows boots really fast...i'm getting new RAM soon, because, for some reason, UT2004 is getting "general protection fault" and i remember reading somewhere that's RAM...


any more suggestions? how to get rid of CWS?


thanks,


alex
 
GreNME said:
FYI: if the service is set to manual, it can't be exploited unless a dumbass runs something that turns it on...
Just an FYI. If you're paranoid, turn it to manual and you're fine.
Click to expand...

And? Most viruses wouldn't be spread if some dumbass didn't run something that spread it. I dont know what point you were trying to make, but there are A LOT of dumbasses out there running stuff every hour of every day.
If a service isn't being used, whats the point of leaving it in manual?
 
-freon- said:
And? Most viruses wouldn't be spread if some dumbass didn't run something that spread it. I dont know what point you were trying to make, but there are A LOT of dumbasses out there running stuff every hour of every day.
If a service isn't being used, whats the point of leaving it in manual?
Click to expand...
Because it isn't running. And from the argument you're making about how viruses work, it's pretty obvious you don't understand how they actually work, and you are instead thinking that "something I don't use or know" == "vulnerability."

You can go ahead and leave yours off if it makes you happy. However, I will continue to call disabling it both stupid and useless.
 
Excuse me? I never said anything about how a virus works. Did I?
I said two things here:
1. UnPnP is not your standard plug and play (his post seemed to indicate he might have thought they were) and was exploited.
2. There is no point in leaving it in manual if it wont be used.

Unless you have some reason to the contrary, which you dont so far, dont bother arguing.
I think leaving something that isnt used enabled is stupid, and useless.. Especially when its not only something you dont use, but also something that has been exploited in the past.
If it's your personal preference to leave stuff like that on, then have at it. Seems more like you have a hangup with agreeing to anything that might be mentioned on some guys website though.
 
-freon- said:
Excuse me? I never said anything about how a virus works. Did I?
Click to expand...
And I quote:"Most viruses wouldn't be spread if some dumbass didn't run something that spread it."

I said two things here:
1. UnPnP is not your standard plug and play (his post seemed to indicate he might have thought they were) and was exploited.
Click to expand...
Irrelevant.

2. There is no point in leaving it in manual if it wont be used.
Click to expand...
If it's manual, it will never be used unless something that requires it later uses it

Unless you have some reason to the contrary, which you dont so far, dont bother arguing.
Click to expand...
Unless you're really ready to go over and over on this, I suggest you begin boning up on what the services actually do and how they actually work (instead of how idiots with no formal training like to assume they do) before trying to continue this argument.

I think leaving something that isnt used enabled is stupid, and useless.. Especially when its not only something you dont use, but also something that has been exploited in the past.
Click to expand...
Which has been patched (more than two years ago), meaning it is not vulnerable. Since RPC has been exploited, it should be disabled as well? Your logic is pretty ridiculous if you really want to follow through with that.

If it's your personal preference to leave stuff like that on, then have at it. Seems more like you have a hangup with agreeing to anything that might be mentioned on some guys website though.
Click to expand...
Actually, it seems like you would rather believe anything some self-titled "expert" says, even when people who have actually done the research (instead of cut-n-paste conjecture).

Like I said, if an attacker has the user privs to call on any of those services, then your box has already been owned. If you want true security instead of this bullshit wannabe security, then take the proper steps instead of these half-assed band-aid measures. Pawning something off as a "solution" that doesn't stop actual access to the machine to begin with and does not actually run anyway until called by a user with proper privileges is the worst type of advice and the best way to screw someone's machine up.

More information on why disabling UPnP is ridiculous paranoia.
 
Since RPC has been exploited, it should be disabled as well?
Click to expand...

Sure.. Too bad RPC is a required service. LOL
I said disable UnPnP because it isnt being used..

Ive never actually read anything on blackvipers site other than looking at the settings for the services in his "gaming" recomendations a few years ago, so I dont know what he has to say about anything really..

As far as my comment on viruses is concerned, where does it say anything about how they work? I was only illustrating the fact that idiots run junk every day, and spread viruses that never should have been spread.. I get emails with attatchments from faked addresses or off the wall servers because dumbasses with my address ran some file they got. With that, this comment made me laugh my ass off:
it can't be exploited unless a dumbass runs something that turns it on
Click to expand...
 
-freon- said:
Sure.. Too bad RPC is a required service. LOL
I said disable UnPnP because it isnt being used..
Click to expand...
And yet dumbasses like The Register tell people to turn it off, and then later blame the reader when shit breaks.

As far as my comment on viruses is concerned, where does it say anything about how they work? I was only illustrating the fact that idiots run junk every day, and spread viruses that never should have been spread.. I get emails with attatchments from faked addresses or off the wall servers because dumbasses with my address ran some file they got. With that, this comment made me laugh my ass off:
Click to expand...
If an idiot runs a virus today, UPnP is so low on the list of things to worry about that there are only a few services (messenger, wireless zero conf, alerter) that are below it in priority. And like I said, genius, if something makes it that far, then it isn't the service that has cause or is propagating the ownage, so disabling it solves jack and shit.
 
A direct quote from BobSutan, moderator of this forum:

"Gren, yes disabling the services in question provides very negligable gains, but if O[H]-Zone wants to disable them then that's his right. He's also got a point in that if its not needed, then why let it run? Defacto security mantra tells you to disable anything not absolutely neccessary for a particular computing environment, which is essentially what it appears he's shooting for."

If you don't use it, shut it off.
 
What a compelling argument. When in doubt, use Appeal to Authority.

The problem with Sutan's statement, which I am sure I have already pointed out (and definitely so in this thread), is that if the service isn't being used by something, it's not running in the first place. Thus, no security threat, no resource hogging, and nothing but tin foil hats being a reason behind disabling it.

There was an exploit long ago, and it was patched, thus covering the vulnerability. For those unable to comprehend, this means that there is no longer a vulnerability.

Tilting at windmills is not a security mantra.
 
From the article you linked to:
Remote Procedure Call (RPC), automatic. This is one of Microsoft's greatest security holes. RPC enables one machine to execute code remotely on another. On UBIX/BSD/Linux, it can be disabled safely. On Windows, it cannot be disabled, as MS has made a plethora of necessary services dependent on it. It's a huge security hole that simply cannot be avoided. It must be blocked by a firewall.

Where do they say to disable it? They clearly say it cant be disabled right there.

I dont care if UnPnP is low on the priority list when it comes ot a virus.. The whole thing just completely blew over your head. You said it would remain off until some dumbass ran something to enable it, I said dumbasses run stuff like that every day. I dont care what they run, or what crap they get on their system, or how much they have to worry about, the fact remains the dumbasses run something that messes things up ALL THE TIME.
Thats the hole in your argument. You say it isnt being used, therefore it isnt a threat.. But you fail to acknowledge the fact that it can still be used. This isnt just about UnPnP, but about any service.
Case in point: I disabled Messenger long before people started getting spam on it. I wasnt using it, therefore I disabled it. Guess that was stupid and useless huh?

Bottom line: there is absolutely no reason to leave it enabled if you dont use it. It doesnt break anything or affect system operation if its disabled. Feel free to disable it, or not if you dont want to.

This is way off the original topic so im going to leave it at that.
 
I'm dropping it too, because this is a stupid, circular argument where the people who do it will continue to make excuses under the pretense of resources, security, and because hey read it somewhere.
 
GreNME said:
What a compelling argument. When in doubt, use Appeal to Authority.

The problem with Sutan's statement, which I am sure I have already pointed out (and definitely so in this thread), is that if the service isn't being used by something, it's not running in the first place. Thus, no security threat, no resource hogging, and nothing but tin foil hats being a reason behind disabling it.

There was an exploit long ago, and it was patched, thus covering the vulnerability. For those unable to comprehend, this means that there is no longer a vulnerability.

Tilting at windmills is not a security mantra.
Click to expand...
Hmmm...so what you're saying in a nutshell is that I can either believe Bobsutan, moderator of this forum, or I can believe you.
And let's look into this statement a bit:

"if the service isn't being used by something, it's not running in the first place"

If I go into the list of services on my machine, the ones marked "Automatic" are all running. That's what automatic means; it starts when Windows starts. If a service is running, it's using resources. While it might not be much, why should I run a service and dedicate resources to it, when I'm not using it, and it is a potential security risk? Oh, and this one:

"There was an exploit long ago, and it was patched, thus covering the vulnerability. For those unable to comprehend, this means that there is no longer a vulnerability."

Do a reinstall of Windows XP. Then go to windows update, but don't download the service packs...do the updates one at a time. You'll find there are a few things that M$ has patched that get patched a second time. So even when M$ "fixes" something, it' doesn't mean "there is no longer a vulnerability". It means they fixed the one they know about; another might come along any day. If the service is needed for an exploit, and it's disabled...there's no exploit.
 
O[H]-Zone said:
Hmmm...so what you're saying in a nutshell is that I can either believe Bobsutan, moderator of this forum, or I can believe you.
Click to expand...
Actually, Bob said that it's your right to disable whatever you want on your machine—which it is—and restated your logic behind it. He doesn't disagree with me, he just has a more "whatever floats your boat" attitude toward it, despite your misquoting him by only take one thing and leaving out the many other things he's said.

And let's look into this statement a bit:

"if the service isn't being used by something, it's not running in the first place"

If I go into the list of services on my machine, the ones marked "Automatic" are all running. That's what automatic means; it starts when Windows starts.
Click to expand...
Wrong. But since you're so adamant about it...

svc-a-o.jpg


Maybe in your (limited) experience that's what you've seen, but with others who have experience with many, many programs and many, many service daemons in Windows, I can assure you that you are very wrong.

If a service is running, it's using resources. While it might not be much, why should I run a service and dedicate resources to it, when I'm not using it, and it is a potential security risk?
Click to expand...
Because even if it is started, most services only take up a few kilobytes and no CPU time until they are called. Yet you persist in claiming that resources are being taken. When you can actually prove a performance improvement, you feel free to come back to us with empirical data. Make sure you do repeatable tests and give the parameters, because "it feels faster" is nothing but placebo running its course.

Oh, and this one:

"There was an exploit long ago, and it was patched, thus covering the vulnerability. For those unable to comprehend, this means that there is no longer a vulnerability."

Do a reinstall of Windows XP. Then go to windows update, but don't download the service packs...do the updates one at a time. You'll find there are a few things that M$ has patched that get patched a second time. So even when M$ "fixes" something, it' doesn't mean "there is no longer a vulnerability". It means they fixed the one they know about; another might come along any day. If the service is needed for an exploit, and it's disabled...there's no exploit.
Click to expand...
Find an exploit for it, troll. Having a vulnerability does not mean there is an exploit, and there isn't even a vulnerability any more.

Also, this ignores everything about how services work. I'll say it again (though you don't seem to listen): if services have been called on your machine by an exploit or attacker, then you've already been owned. Building up a false sense of security from being infected and not seeing it does not make you safer, nor does it prevent you from infecting others because of your ignorance.
 
O[H]-Zone said:
Hmmm...so what you're saying in a nutshell is that I can either believe Bobsutan, moderator of this forum, or I can believe you.
Click to expand...

Let me clear one thing up. Just because person A is a mod...and person B isn't...doesn't mean the mod is correct. I know nothing about Bobsutan....and I am not taking sides here. But that is absolutely absurd to believe a mod is correct simply because of the title. I've been here for four+ years. Mods come and go. Some were/are very knowledgeable and some haven't been. Mods aren't picked on overall knowledge...there are quite a few other factors.
 
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