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    Slow Boot on 4420

    Discussion in 'Acer' started by roycextensa, Dec 25, 2009.

  1. roycextensa

    roycextensa Notebook Enthusiast

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    Merry Xmas to all!
    I have my Extensa 4420 for over a year now. I changed to XP as soon as I bought it and everything has been working perfectly ever since.
    What has changed is the time it takes to boot.
    In the beginning, it would boot in just under 90 sec.
    Now it takes 3 minutes!
    I'm running XP with SP3...updated regularly.
    I have gone into the Boot.ini and diabled everything but the antivirus (Avira) and my Mailwasher program.
    I defragged 4 times this morning with 78% free space on the disk.
    I have disabled everything but the essentials from the Startup (msconfig)

    I hit the WINDOWS XP screen @ 5 sec, WELCOME screen at 30 sec. and the screensaver @ just under 60 sec.

    Any ideas on what I can look for or how to see what is slowing the boot-up process to a crawl?
     
    roycextensa, Dec 25, 2009
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  2. kiriakost

    kiriakost Notebook Deity

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    There is no easy answer .

    I would suggest to download the trial of the New Norton utilities .

    Run only the reg cleaner .

    It could possibly trace and correct some issues .

    You could also check the Windows event viewer for issues .
     
    kiriakost, Dec 25, 2009
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  3. roycextensa

    roycextensa Notebook Enthusiast

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    Your suggestion was perfect...the Event Viewer!
    This took me on quite an eye-opening journey.
    I found errors in the [SYSTEM] event log at startup. The same errors at every startup:
    lxdqCATSCUSTOMERSERVICE
    SeaPort Service

    I also noticed that Roxio had several listings in the start-up and Services.

    I researched this and found out that Roxio, when installed, searches the hardrive for media files. Apparently, it does it again at every start-up!
    Disabled that and reduced the 3 min boot down to 90 Secs.

    Then, I disabled CATS & SeaPort in the Startup, but both were listed in the Services.
    the CATS seems to be some sort of malware.
    The Seaport was a little harder to find out about. Turns out it is a Microsaft program installed with Live Update in IE. It has no user settings and severely slows down the boot up. It also has no know benefits.

    I deleted both by going into the registry and deleting ALL references to both.
    My laptop now boots in 68 secs and all is working well.
    I will also now diable the automatic windows updates so that i can monitor what comes in from microsoft. They just don't get it.

    Thanks again for pointing me in the right direction!
     
    roycextensa, Dec 27, 2009
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