Having issues with boot time on my gaming pc

[brandonwh64]

Yes, I have tried Ubuntu 64bit and Windows XP... both worked flawlessly.

Are you using a pirated copy ?

 

[TheMailMan78]

Are you using a pirated copy ?

Yeah. I have the feeling we are not getting ALL the info. A clean install doesn't have multi-accounts.

 

[JonathanC]

Yeah. I have the feeling we are not getting ALL the info. A clean install doesn't have multi-accounts.

No no no, my clean install didn't have multi accounts lol, maybe I typed that incorrectly. What I meant was that when you install a fresh copy your account automatically has owner access. What i was saying... is that the reason my Guest account test may have work, is because maybe there is a service that doesn't run when you enter a guest account... as in, maybe there is a microsoft service that is only on owner accounts, hence why clean installs may not be working....... but then again I have no idea as this same Windows 7 Ultimate disc worked on my old pc.



As for "is it a pirated copy" No sir this is one of the few OS's i actually paid for XD

 

[dir_d]

Now that i come to think of it i was having 2 min boots on my SSD for a week. The service that was hanging on boot was Microsoft Live Sign in Assistant. Its a long shot but try chomping that service from booting at the start.

 

[JonathanC]

Now that i come to think of it i was having 2 min boots on my SSD for a week. The service that was hanging on boot was Microsoft Live Sign in Assistant. Its a long shot but try chomping that service from booting at the start.

Will try that now

 

[JimboC]

maybe there is a service that doesn't run when you enter a guest account... as in, maybe there is a microsoft service that is only on owner accounts, hence why clean installs may not be working....... but then again I have no idea as this same Windows 7 Ultimate disc worked on my old pc.

Hi JonathanC,

From my knowledge of Windows Internals, different accounts with different privilege levels do not run different services to one another when both accounts are clean installs. They would only differ in the 3rd party start-up programs that are enabled. For example, if program A was installed in account 1 in a folder only accessible by account 1, but not account 2. Thus program A would not start in account 2.

When I say program, I mean precisely that, if program A installed a service (a service is different to a user level program) that is located in a folder that is globally accessible from both accounts, this service will run in both accounts (services will always start with Windows if they are set to Automatically start (i.e. not manual or disabled start up type)). Services have higher privileges levels than user programs. Most user programs have a Medium integrity level (permissions); services usually have a High or System integrity levels.

Most services are installed in the Program Files folder which is accessible by admin and standard user accounts. Services can also be located in System32 or SysWOW64 (32 bit folder on Windows 64 bit).

If a program is run with Administrator privileges and you receive a UAC prompt, that program will then run with a High integrity level (permissions).

Exceptions to this are for Internet Explorer 7 on Windows Vista or later. With protected mode enabled this runs at low integrity. IE 10 on Windows 8 with Enhanced Protected mode enabled runs with the new integrity level of AppContainer rather than Low.

MSDN has more information on integrity levels:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb625963

Information on the AppContainer integrity level can be found in the following blog post:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ieinternals...rk-security-addons-cookies-metro-desktop.aspx

The point of all of the above is to show that if a clean install is not working, there is something else at fault, drivers, hardware, BIOS etc.

Also, if you are using a copy of Windows that originally came pre-installed on another PC and you are using that same disc on a different PC, that version of Windows is no longer correctly licensed. That version of Windows is supposed to be locked to the PC that it originally came with.

Here is an extract from the Microsoft Licensing site:

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Because the software is already preinstalled, the reinstallation or recovery media is provided so that you can reinstall or recover the software if it stops working properly. Recovery disks are not licensed to be sold separately from the PC they were shipped with; if you try to install software from a recovery disk on a PC other than the one it was originally shipped on, you may not be able to activate and/or use it.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source: http://www.microsoft.com/en-ie/howtotell/Hardware.aspx#PCPurchase

I could be wrong if I may have misinterpreted the following statement from your earlier post “I have no idea as this same Windows 7 Ultimate disc worked on my old pc.”

I hope this helps. Thanks.

 

[JonathanC]

Now that i come to think of it i was having 2 min boots on my SSD for a week. The service that was hanging on boot was Microsoft Live Sign in Assistant. Its a long shot but try chomping that service from booting at the start.

Well damn... my computers performance increase amazingly! went from the original 358023ms start up all the way down to 135869ms

Think you might be on to something here ;D

 

[TheMailMan78]

Microsoft Live Sign in Assistant doesn't install by default on a clean install.

 

[JimboC]

Well damn... my computers performance increase amazingly! went from the original 358023ms start up all the way down to 135869ms

Think you might be on to something here ;D

Hi JonathanC,

That’s good to hear.

However, my original idea to use Process Monitor to profile your system on boot-up would have shown this and can still help you improve start-up time further by showing you the other cause(s) of the slow down.

Information on how to to use Process Monitor was provided in my first post in this thread.

Microsoft Live Sign in Assistant doesn't install by default on a clean install.

Agreed, it doesn't. Good point, as you imply it contradicts that a clean install was used.

Thanks.

 

[JonathanC]

Microsoft Live Sign in Assistant doesn't install by default on a clean install.

Well regardless it made a huge performance increase, although it is still saying my boot is Critical so idk...

 

[JonathanC]

Hi JonathanC,

That’s good to hear.

However, my original idea to use Process Monitor to profile your system on boot-up would have shown this and can still help you improve start-up time further by showing you the other cause(s) of the slow down.

Information on how to to use Process Monitor was provided in my first post in this thread.



Agreed, it doesn't.

Thanks.

I'm checking it out now..

 

[dir_d]

keep us updated what you find out.

 

[JonathanC]

keep us updated what you find out.

Sadly the boot time has increased again to two minutes... uggghhh.. I used Soluto as well, no help :/

 

[natr0n]

Sadly the boot time has increased again to two minutes... uggghhh.. I used Soluto as well, no help :/

you should keep track of what you installed , to figure out which app is causing this

 

[JonathanC]

you should keep track of what you installed , to figure out which app is causing this

well according to Soluto Avast was taking 260 seconds to start, I uninstalled it hoping maybe it would solve the problem, and nothing :/

 

[dir_d]

Now whats hanging according to soluto or is it before windows boots?

 

[JonathanC]

Now whats hanging according to soluto or is it before windows boots?

I'm not entirely sure. Soluto pointed out a few things, I tried correcting them but the computer is still really slow with the boot time, I'm starting to wonder if its more of a hardware problem that seems to only effect windows 7... Hmmm, I'll do some more boot logging tomorrow and see if I can figure this out, I'll keep everyone updated.

EDIT: I have added a Soluto screen snippet to show processes in the Required section that are taking long than 5 seconds to start.

 

[JimboC]

Hi JonathanC,

Uninstalling Avast may not be enough to fully remove it. I would recommend running the Avast removal tool to fully remove all of its components. The tool is available from the following link:

http://www.avast.com/uninstall-utility

If uninstalling it has left behind any drivers, these could be loading at start-up further slowing down the boot-up process.

As I mentioned before, in addition to using Soluto you could also run Sysinternals Autoruns (after unzipping it, right click autoruns.exe and choose “Run As Admininstrator”), check the Services, Logon and Drivers tabs for anything related to programs or drivers that you have uninstalled or want to remove from the boot-up process. This should help reduce the number of unnecessary drivers and services from starting with Windows.

I hope this helps. Thanks.

 

[JonathanC]

Hi JonathanC,

Uninstalling Avast may not be enough to fully remove it. I would recommend running the Avast removal tool to fully remove all of its components. The tool is available from the following link:

http://www.avast.com/uninstall-utility

If uninstalling it has left behind any drivers, these could be loading at start-up further slowing down the boot-up process.

As I mentioned before, in addition to using Soluto you could also run Sysinternals Autoruns (after unzipping it, right click autoruns.exe and choose “Run As Admininstrator”), check the Services, Logon and Drivers tabs for anything related to programs or drivers that you have uninstalled or want to remove from the boot-up process. This should help reduce the number of unnecessary drivers and services from starting with Windows.

I hope this helps. Thanks.

So I uninstalled Avast completely using the tool you provided in the link. The performance did increase greatly, afterwards I installed Bitdefender Total Security 2013 Using their built in tune-up tools I was able to get my computer running even faster (Overall performance, not boot time) Then I installed a program I purchased called "Advanced System Optimizer 3.1" Which gave me 8243 Registry error's detected, it took 30 minutes to fix it all. This increased performance at boot by 1 Min 30 Sec's... so my over all boot has come down to 1 Min 48 Sec's (Vs. the original 5 minute boot)... Still a bit to slow for the hardware I am using. Starting to question drivers again though as ASO 3.1 found two outdated drivers, My Broadcom internet (Ethernet) Ports and RAID drivers, not sure if these can cause slow boot, but will be updating anyways! Also using Bitdefender and ASO 3.1 I was able to manage unnecessary services that start with my computer, I also disabled a few more items using Soluto... I will be doing a few more troubleshoots soon and will keep everyone posted.

EDIT: Soluto Reports that AMD Fuel has been crashing at every startup, the question is why? Is anyone else experiencing this?

 

[JimboC]

Hi JonathanC,

That’s great news, I am glad that helped.

In order to reduce boot-up time further I would ensure that all of these optimization utilities are not loading taskbar programs/background tasks or services. Having this many programs that optimize a system can help but they also carry resource overhead.

If your Windows installation was a clean install I really don’t see how Advanced System Optimizer 3.1 corrected 8243 errors. Results from free programs like this should be taken with a large pinch of salt. Yes, it sped up boot time by 90 seconds but such residue in the registry only builds up from installing and uninstalling programs often.

Now that this program has done its job, disable it from starting with Windows to cut boot time a little further.

For example, my PC only starts my AV software and the fragmentation prevention service of PerfectDisk v12.5 Professional Build 311. That’s it, nothing else. I was even reluctant to allow PerfectDisk to start at boot up. I believe in a very minimal start-up configuration since every program that loads adds overhead, takes up a bit of RAM and has the potential to crash or cause a conflict. I believe the fewer programs that are running at start-up for speed and reliability reasons the better.

My PC boots in 35 seconds (30 seconds if you remove the time it takes for me to type my Windows password). I have an advantage of using a 600GB Western Digital VelociRaptor, SATA 6Gb/s, 10000rpm with 32 MB Cache for my Windows drive. This isn’t as fast as an SSD but it’s faster than your average HDD. My Windows installation is now 13 months old and I update every program on my PC as new updates become available, so lots of installing and occasional uninstalling. I don’t use registry optimizers; I don’t believe they can make a significant difference.

My chipset, GPU, sound card, network card and wireless network card are using the most up to date drivers.

If you have ever had any other security software installed on your computer (other than Avast and Bitdefender) I would also suggest running the appropriate removal tool for it. I have created a full of all such tools in a different forum at:

http://www.pctools.com/forum/showthread.php?69641-Bsod&p=242073#post242073

Try also booting your PC without Soluto monitoring it and see what difference it makes, monitoring a boot adds time too. One final suggestion is to disable AMD Fuel temporarily since it’s crashing; recovering from this crash during boot up is probably adding yet more time.

I hope this is of assistance to you. If I can help further, please let me know.

Thanks.

 

[TheMailMan78]

I love how uninstalling things sped up your boot time....yet a clean install did nothing. Do you know what a clean install is?

 

[Aquinus]

Turn off GUI boot so you can watch what system files are getting loaded on boot. You can diagnose start-up speed issues here. As far as logging into your account, it sounds like your computer is booting a ton of applications when it starts. Have you tried checking out the performance monitor after the machine boots to see what process has used the most I/O (assuming I/O is your bottleneck, and on boot, it typically is)? It only takes a handful of high I/O applications to slow down your login.

I love how uninstalling things sped up your boot time....yet a clean install did nothing. Do you know what a clean install is?

If your doing a "clean install" and it isn't getting better, you're doing something wrong because Windows boots the fastest after a clean install is almost every case. Clean install does also include formatting what ever device your installing Windows to (single drive, ssd, raid, etc.) not just installing Windows over the crap that is already on that device.

 

[TheMailMan78]

Turn off GUI boot so you can watch what system files are getting loaded on boot. You can diagnose start-up speed issues here. As far as logging into your account, it sounds like your computer is booting a ton of applications when it starts. Have you tried checking out the performance monitor after the machine boots to see what process has used the most I/O (assuming I/O is your bottleneck, and on boot, it typically is)? It only takes a handful of high I/O applications to slow down your login.



If your doing a "clean install" and it isn't getting better, you're doing something wrong because Windows boots the fastest after a clean install is almost every case. Clean install does also include formatting what ever device your installing Windows to (single drive, ssd, raid, etc.) not just installing Windows over the crap that is already on that device.

Yeah I know. I went as far as telling him to delete the partitions and writing zeros. But that didn't help he said. Only disabling things that were not installed in a clean install works? This is like trying to fix Dr. Whos computer.

 

[CrAsHnBuRnXp]

I dont know if its been said yet as im not going to pour through all these posts so i apologize in advance if it has been mentioned. (i just woke up and dont feel like it).

Have you tried a different hard drive with windows installed on it? Have you benchmarked the hard drives speed to see if youre getting accurate speeds? If the speeds are not accurate then the most likely culprit is the hard drive and it will need to be replaced.

Say for example you have your OS on your 300GB hdd and it is the one giving you the problems right now. If you can, put windows on your WD 1TB hdd (partition the drive if you have to) and boot windows. Do you still have the same problem?

 

[JimboC]

Yeah I know. I went as far as telling him to delete the partitions and writing zeros. But that didn't help he said. Only disabling things that were not installed in a clean install works? This is like trying to fix Dr. Whos computer.

If your doing a "clean install" and it isn't getting better, you're doing something wrong because Windows boots the fastest after a clean install is almost every case. Clean install does also include formatting what ever device your installing Windows to (single drive, ssd, raid, etc.) not just installing Windows over the crap that is already on that device.

Hi JonathanC,
If your Windows installation was a clean install I really don’t see how Advanced System Optimizer 3.1 corrected 8243 errors. .

Hi guys,

I am glad I am not the only one thinking that way.

Your advice is right on the money but so far seems to have been ignored (unintentionally or intentionally).

Thanks.