Vista slow to boot

irlrobins

Installed Vista Home Ultimate last week (dualboot with XP) and all is working fine. Apart from the fact it's very slow to boot. It was a clean install and I don't have any additional software installed apart from Adobe Reader, AVG, firefox.

Set up is this:
P4 HT 3.4Ghz
2Gb Ram
X800XT
250Gb SATA HD (partitioned as follows: 50Gb (Vista installed here), 50Gb (XP SP2 installed here), 67Gb (Data files), 67Gb (Media files).

Everything seems to run ok once I'm logged into Vista but just takes an age to get to login screen.

Anyone experience the same problem? Or know of a solution?

Edit: Looking in event viewer I can see a Diagnostics-Performance error relating to Boot Performance Monitoring. Details of the event below:

Log Name: Microsoft-Windows-Diagnostics-Performance/Operational
Source: Microsoft-Windows-Diagnostics-Performance
Date: 04/03/2007 11:34:27
Event ID: 100
Task Category: Boot Performance Monitoring
Level: Error
Keywords: Event Log
User: LOCAL SERVICE
Computer: The-Beast
Description:
Windows has started up:
Boot Duration : 115957ms
IsDegradation : false
Incident Time (UTC) : 04/03/2007 11:31:07
Event Xml:
<Event xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/events/event"&gt;
<System>
<Provider Name="Microsoft-Windows-Diagnostics-Performance" Guid="{cfc18ec0-96b1-4eba-961b-622caee05b0a}" />
<EventID>100</EventID>
<Version>1</Version>
<Level>2</Level>
<Task>4002</Task>
<Opcode>34</Opcode>
<Keywords>0x8000000000010000</Keywords>
<TimeCreated SystemTime="2007-03-04T11:34:27.649Z" />
<EventRecordID>108</EventRecordID>
<Correlation ActivityID="{00000000-5868-0000-A8B8-9C99505EC701}" />
<Execution ProcessID="1628" ThreadID="2700" />
<Channel>Microsoft-Windows-Diagnostics-Performance/Operational</Channel>
<Computer>The-Beast</Computer>
<Security UserID="S-1-5-19" />
</System>
<EventData>
<Data Name="BootTsVersion">2</Data>
<Data Name="BootStartTime">2007-03-04T11:31:07.092Z</Data>
<Data Name="BootEndTime">2007-03-04T11:34:23.183Z</Data>
<Data Name="SystemBootInstance">18</Data>
<Data Name="UserBootInstance">17</Data>
<Data Name="BootTime">115957</Data>
<Data Name="MainPathBootTime">79557</Data>
<Data Name="BootKernelInitTime">92</Data>
<Data Name="BootDriverInitTime">2049</Data>
<Data Name="BootDevicesInitTime">4551</Data>
<Data Name="BootPrefetchInitTime">38618</Data>
<Data Name="BootPrefetchBytes">397934592</Data>
<Data Name="BootAutoChkTime">0</Data>
<Data Name="BootSmssInitTime">65964</Data>
<Data Name="BootCriticalServicesInitTime">1850</Data>
<Data Name="BootUserProfileProcessingTime">395</Data>
<Data Name="BootMachineProfileProcessingTime">885</Data>
<Data Name="BootExplorerInitTime">1611</Data>
<Data Name="BootNumStartupApps">15</Data>
<Data Name="BootPostBootTime">36400</Data>
<Data Name="BootIsRebootAfterInstall">false</Data>
<Data Name="BootRootCauseStepImprovementBits">0</Data>
<Data Name="BootRootCauseGradualImprovementBits">0</Data>
<Data Name="BootRootCauseStepDegradationBits">0</Data>
<Data Name="BootRootCauseGradualDegradationBits">128</Data>
<Data Name="BootIsDegradation">false</Data>
<Data Name="BootIsStepDegradation">false</Data>
<Data Name="BootIsGradualDegradation">false</Data>
<Data Name="BootImprovementDelta">0</Data>
<Data Name="BootDegradationDelta">0</Data>
<Data Name="BootIsRootCauseIdentified">true</Data>
</EventData>
</Event>

Krusty_Clown

What kind of time are you talking about?
My spec is very similar (but slower), I have 1GB of RAM (+1Gb ReadyBoost), and IDE Hard-drive (partitioned in a similar fashion) and a Geforce 6200. So if you want to post up your boot-up time, I can offer you mine as a comparison..

I usually keep mine in 'sleep' mode though, which means it boots up in about 2 seconds.

Ginger

Mine boots in under 30 seconds clean install similar setup...

40GB partition Windows XP SP2
40GB partition Vista Ultimate

AMD 4400+
4GB RAM

Its a 160GB hard disk on the primary IDE channel..

It looks like its taking 2 minutes to boot. Thats particularly long. This seems to be the hog

BootSmssInitTime which is the Session Manager.. Dont know what can be done to work with it. Just wondering if its an interaction with AVG that causing the issue. I was under the impression that AV solutions were still having probs with Vista


Session manager and what it does @ http://geekswithblogs.net/sdorman/archive/2006/06/17/82202.aspx

irlrobins

yea 2-3 mins sounds right. tbh, it was slow to boot before I had AVG installed. But I might try uninstalling it and seeing if it makes a difference.

Ginger

All the different times are in MS the main hogs seem to be

<Data Name="BootPrefetchInitTime">38618</Data>
<Data Name="BootSmssInitTime">65964</Data>

By any chance do you have a Promise raid controller connected to that disk?

Dont know if that is any good to you

http://www.vistaclues.com/diagnose-performance-problems/

irlrobins

Nope don't think so. I don't have a RAID setup and i think the RAID controller would be an Intel one (PC is a Dell 8400). I do have a WD MyBook Ext HD attached. Might try booting with that off.

8T8

My two Vista systems both boot in under 20-30 seconds so yeah something up there if it's 2-3 minutes.

I use Avast Home Edition as the AV on one of the systems and it has not caused any delays in boot time so it's worth checking out.

Install any XP drivers in Vista for unsupported hardware ?

Try a defrag of the HD ?

One thing I have noticed is that you will see a lot of disk thrashing when using Vista or when it is idle this is just the prefetch service at work moving data around to more optimal positions and it will take a couple of days or more for it to settle down & boot times can be affected in a positive manner.

irlrobins

Ok got some time to return to this problem tonight.

Uninstall AVG and disconnected ext removable hard drive. Booted up and was up in about 20 secs. Reconnected HD and back to slow boot. So I'll do some looking into what might be causing this.

Thanks for the help.

Rhodney

try installing the Vista Ultimate Lite version
my sytems is celeron 2.4ghz, 40 gb hd, 15gb for vista, 512 memory shared with 8m video...booting time, less than 30sec.

Ginger

I wonder is it the size of the disk rather than the external hard disk causing the issue..

500GB and it might be doing a quick FS investigation which over USB2 will e kinda slow enough

8T8

I've heard of some weird things going on with USB and external hard drives under Vista not sure what the cause is though.

Could it be a powered port issue is the external HD running through a hub or directly into the computer, try swapping the port it plugs into either way.

Also a scandisk of the file system on the external HD might be worth a try as well.