Time to format....

[Submeg]

My bootup time is at 3 and a half minutes...very lame. Time to format and see what it gets to....

[Submeg]

Format is done, boot time down to one minute :)

[StuKeith]

I can turn pc on, go to loo and then have a shower.

The PC is then just about ready to run.

Last format was about 6 weeks ago or so.


Mine is hardware related im sure. it has to be the CPU, not the HDD which HP replaced!

[Submeg]

Geez! Last time I did a format was six months ago :blink: what are you doing with that thing?

[v85rawdeal]

Both my machines take about 1-2 mins to load fully...

Whereas the 'Miggy' does it in less than 10 seconds!!!

PC software is so process-intensive. Gah!

[Stephen Coates]

Mine probably boots up in about 2 to 3 minutes, but it is using Windows 2000, and I can't say for sure the amount of time because I havn't measuered it.

I do have to wait quite a while after logging on though, and I don't have any programmes loading on startup.

This installation was probably made in late 2006. I was going to reinstall it all and maybe reorganise the way that some things are arranged on my HDs, but decided I couldn't be bothered and that I would stick with it as it is.

[Buleste]

Why not try defragging or other clean up utilities rather than formatting?

[StuKeith]

I defrag every other day! Im forever dl stuff and hacking the thing. Also it freezes up a lot when trying to play iTunes.


Even browsing the web and loading email at same time maxes CPU load and hangs outlook 07

[Buleste]

I must be doing something wrong I've only got an overclocke P4 2.6(running at 3.0) with 1gb ram (Ineed more) on XP and O.k. sometimes it freezes but most the time it's fine. As for e-mail i use Incredimail. I have to defrag at most once a month. If you want a superb drive cleaner use Dustbuster. It's in Italian but it frees a heluva lot of drive space. Other than that make sure you use NTFS as it needs defragging less often. How hot is your processor running?

[Submeg]

I find that defragging doesnt help me with slow loading programs, lock ups and such...it doe s very little in that department....

[Stephen Coates]

1 minute 35 seconds, from switch on to 'Press CTRL+ALT+DELETE to logon' screen, and 65 seconds from loging on to the HD stopping. 2:14 in total excluding the time it takes to enter password.

[StuKeith]

My pc at work took under a minute to load. it was like 15 seconds to get to the login prompt. My CPU runs at around 65oC

[Submeg]

Damn, you could make some breakfast with that :thumbs:

[Harrison]

What system spec is your PC Stu? That seems very slow indeed, and the CPU seems very hot. Is it an Athlon XP?

My main XP Pro based PC boots to the desktop and finishes loading everything in under 30 seconds. I make sure I keep the system as clean as possible , not installing junk, and keeping the registry clean with the minimum of items running at startup.

There are a number of things that can slow down booting. The one most people don't realise is the number of icons on the desktop. This can badly slowdown the boot-up time.

The next is having command queuing enabled for the HD. This HD technology doesn't actually give any real world performance gain and will make XP pause for up to 30 seconds during bootup. Disabling command queuing (from the Device manager IDE/ATAPI controllers) will remove this pause in the boot process.

Next is programs loading during startup. Even if there is nothing in the startup folder in the start menu there could still be a lot loading. You need to look in the registry at the actual list of programs being run at startup and delete the entries for any you definitely don't need. Things like the Quicktime or Real Player files are definitely not needed. And any program that can easily be started from the start menu should have a quick launch icon loaded at startup as that is pointless and will just slow things down and eat up memory.

Next is hardware problems. If there are bad sectors on the HD this will slow down the loading of Windows dramatically as the system will continue to try and read a sector from the drive for quite some time before moving on. The other is Ram. If some of the ram is faulty this will again slow the booting process or make the system unstable.

That is only some of the things that can slow it down, but a clean install of XP should definitely boot up in about a minute or less.

Windows 2000 was quite different. That took a lot longer to boot up. I seem to remember my last Windows 2000 system would take about 5 minutes to fully boot to the desktop. And the less said about the speed of Windows 98 the better!

[Stephen Coates]

I just booted Windows 98 and it took about 1 minutes 50 seconds from switch on to the system becoming usable. And that includes the extra few seconds that were required for it to tell me that it has updated the clock due to summer ending. As a result, my clock is now an hour slower than it should be.

[Sharingan]

Last time I formatted my PC was more than 3 years ago, but my Windows XP still boots up in less than 26 seconds. So, not having formatted in a while doesn't always have to be the culprit of a machine that's slowed down to a crawl.

The first thing you should do the troubleshoot slow loading times is to press Ctrl-Alt-Del and take a look at the amount of running processes in Task Manager. My bet is that AT LEAST half of what you have running there is NOT necessary for your everyday tasks.

Just for reference, after a fresh bootup, I have a mere 11-12 processes active, all of which are basically the bare essentials (explorer.exe, two instances of svchost.exe, lsass.exe and a few others).

[StuKeith]

ITs an AMD 64, 3700. I have a gig of matched OCZ RAM, one 300GB SATA drive and a 80GB SATA drive just for the OS (I brought the 80gb to see if this speed matters up)

All my main drive has is windows, and the files programs install into the windows system dir.

All my games and apps are installed on a different drive. I have removed all bar my mouse software msn, and av/fw from the msconfig. but some files still reaprear. I have also disabled all of the apple services.

I do have 5 mapped network drives though! but even so. when loading two progs up at one the pc will hang.

and just recently it can take 2 boots to get the pc working.

Thus makes me think the CPU is cooked!

[Buleste]

If not cooked certainly toasty. What cooling have you got?

On a different note. What registry cleaners does everyone recommend???

[Stephen Coates]

Going back to the subject of defragging, why does the Windows 2000 defragger not defrag floppy disks? I had to use the Windows 98 one to defrag my floppy disk.

[Harrison]

Defrag floppy disks? :blink: Is that really needed? I've certainly not heard of it being required. Floppy disks are so small you could just format and copy the contents back on again.

And with an HD using NTFS instead of FAT32 you shouldn't need to defrag the HDs that often at all. Once per month at most is all that is needed, and you won't see much of a performance increase compared to FAT32 formatted drives which quickly slow down due to fragmentation.

And Sharingan made a very good point regarding processes. Something to speed up the OS by quite a lot is to optimise the number of processes that start with the system and run in the background, but are not actually being used for anything. Think of it like Libraries loaded into memory on an Amiga taking up room in memory. To sort out what all of the processes you have running are look through the list of processes you have running and google each of them and read about what they do. You will quickly find those that are not needed, and then can concentrate on how to disable them.

Another thing to speed up system performance is disabling unneeded system services. Windows runs things called services. These are again much like Libraries on an Amiga. Each service is dedicated to running a specific part of the OS or a task relating to certain programs you have installed. You can opt to set each service to start automatically during boot up, which will slow the booting process, or you can set them to manually start when needed, or you can disable them completely.

A service everyone can disable without worry is "messenger". Don't worry this isn't the same as M$ Instant Messenger, but is instead the older built in version that isn't needed. And any services installed that need to run when an applcation starts can be changed from automatic to manual, so they only start when the application needs them.

[Harrison]

ITs an AMD 64, 3700. I have a gig of matched OCZ RAM, one 300GB SATA drive and a 80GB SATA drive just for the OS (I brought the 80gb to see if this speed matters up)

All my main drive has is windows, and the files programs install into the windows system dir.

All my games and apps are installed on a different drive. I have removed all bar my mouse software msn, and av/fw from the msconfig. but some files still reaprear. I have also disabled all of the apple services.

I do have 5 mapped network drives though! but even so. when loading two progs up at one the pc will hang.

and just recently it can take 2 boots to get the pc working.

Thus makes me think the CPU is cooked!

Something is definitely not right with your system. One of my two Athlon 64 systems is a 3700+ and at idle it runs at 26 deg C, and when under load at about 30-37 Deg C. So if your CPU is running at 60 there is something not right at all. Either the motherboard isn't reporting the correct temperature, or the CPU is getting much too hot. My one is also using the stock cooler that came with the retail CPU so nothing special. I would definitely recommend removing the heatsink, cleaning it up and applying a very thin new layer of thermal compound, as it doesn't sound like the CPU cooling is being that effective.

The other problems that could be causing such issues include the motherboard, ram or PSU being faulty. Instabilities you are experiencing are common with ram related issues. Have you tested the ram? And have you also tested that there are no bad blocks or read errors on the HD?

The first thing I always check when I have an unstable PC is the System logs (right click my computer, select manage, go to System tools/Event Viewer/System) and look for any red X entries or yellow exclamation mark entries and look up the errors thay are giving in google.

[StuKeith]

ITs new RAM. I brought this ram as well to see if it helped, but no.

Idle is 65oc under load is 70+ I cleaned the mobo cpu and hs/fan and applied new grease!

Im going to get a new CPU soon. Unless I can try the cpu in one of yours H?

that way can deffo make sure that its that!

[Bloodwych]

The Newcastle and especially the Clawhammer Athlon64's do run hot with the default cooler - about 45-50C idle and 55-60 full load. Those are perfectly acceptable temp ranges for an Athlon64 CPU and it'll be long obsolete before failing.

Venice and later models run a lot cooler and rarely go above 50C as they're built on a smaller process - 90nm vs 130nm of older Athlon64's.

Above 70C full load is hot, but remember that these are adjusted internal temps which read MUCH hotter than the external socket diode readings of old, so your motherboard may be either reporting unadjusted or inaccurate readings (a common issue with early Athlon64 bios versions). Touch the heatsink while it's been running full load for several minutes - if it really is 70C+ you won't be able to keep your finger on it for more than a brief second. If you can keep your finger there for several seconds, it's probably running cooler than reported.

Finally, if it's 100% stable running a program like prime95 after you've cleaned out the cooler and checked the heatsink greese/contact, then I wouldn't worry about the temp. It will fail prime95 LONG before hitting a temp that will damage the CPU or reduce it's life by any meaningful value to a home user.

[Submeg]

Next is programs loading during startup. Even if there is nothing in the startup folder in the start menu there could still be a lot loading. You need to look in the registry at the actual list of programs being run at startup and delete the entries for any you definitely don't need. Things like the Quicktime or Real Player files are definitely not needed. And any program that can easily be started from the start menu should have a quick launch icon loaded at startup as that is pointless and will just slow things down and eat up memory.

How do I get into the registry?I cant remember! Also, what programs must you have running to keep the machine active?

[Harrison]

The Newcastle and especially the Clawhammer Athlon64's do run hot with the default cooler - about 45-50C idle and 55-60 full load. Those are perfectly acceptable temp ranges for an Athlon64 CPU and it'll be long obsolete before failing.

Venice and later models run a lot cooler and rarely go above 50C as they're built on a smaller process - 90nm vs 130nm of older Athlon64's.

Above 70C full load is hot, but remember that these are adjusted internal temps which read MUCH hotter than the external socket diode readings of old, so your motherboard may be either reporting unadjusted or inaccurate readings (a common issue with early Athlon64 bios versions). Touch the heatsink while it's been running full load for several minutes - if it really is 70C+ you won't be able to keep your finger on it for more than a brief second. If you can keep your finger there for several seconds, it's probably running cooler than reported.

Finally, if it's 100% stable running a program like prime95 after you've cleaned out the cooler and checked the heatsink greese/contact, then I wouldn't worry about the temp. It will fail prime95 LONG before hitting a temp that will damage the CPU or reduce it's life by any meaningful value to a home user.

I'm sure all 3700+ chips use the San Diego core which runs much cooler than the older Newcastle.

It probably would be a useful thing to soak test the system over night and see what happens. And also to run a stress and memory test to also check everything is OK. The easiest way to do this is download the Ultimate boot CD from http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/ as it contains CPU Burn-In, Mersenne Prime Test and StressCPU, as well as Memory tests such as Memtest86. If you run these you will be sure the hardware is all OK.

[Bloodwych]

You might be right Harrison - those mad ratings are so confusing at times. I seem to remember an early 2.4GHz Clawhammer with 1MB cache being rated at 3700+ on socket 759 and thought that was the only chip to be rated as such. What I didn't realize until now is socket 939 also had a later 3700+ release with a san diego core!

Like Harrison said, run tests to gauge performance against others with the same CPU and look for errors.

[Teho]

How do I get into the registry?I cant remember!

Start -> Run: regedit

Rule of thumb when messing with the registry is backing it up first (File -> export), just in case you really mess things up!

And here's a useful step-by-step guide (http://www.windowsdevcenter.com/pub/a/windows/2006/08/22/how-to-remove-startup-programs.html) for removing startup programs as well.

[AlexJ]

Or download Codestuff Starter (freeware) if you don't fancy messing about in the registry.

[Submeg]

Cool cheers ppl

[StuKeith]

http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/[/url] as it contains CPU Burn-In, Mersenne Prime Test and StressCPU, as well as Memory tests such as Memtest86. If you run these you will be sure the hardware is all OK.

I left it on overnight with prime runing and it was hung on 40% or so. tried to load some over progs and told me didnt have permission to run anything, or file could not be found!

[Harrison]

As your CPU is getting hot anyway, this indicates that Prime pushed the FPU in the CPU very hard and overheated the CPU, causing the crash. Therefore your CPU is definitely overheating and causing the instability in your system. Maybe think about getting a better heatsink. Also what case cooling do you have? And have you measured the temperature of the inside of the case?

[StuKeith]

Its the std case of an HP. The case fan is std medium size 8cm or what ever it is. sometimes it sounds like a jet plane taking off!

[Sharingan]

8cm fans are tools of the devil. There are aftermarket coolers available that have much better heatsinks than the standard ones, as well as either 9.2cm or 12cm fan. Bigger fans generate better airflow at lower fan speeds, as well as making a lower-pitched sound, so they're much quieter. Most even come with a voltage regulator, which allows you to adjust the fan speed manually.

[Harrison]

I've not seen inside an HP case for some years, but when I used to have to upgrade or repair ones in a company I worked for years ago there were horribly designed with restricted air flow.

Where is the case fan? Front or rear? For the best air flow and cooling the best setup is to have a fan at the lowest point at the front of the case, drawing air into the case, and the other fan level or above the CPU at the rear extracting air out. This will draw the cooler outside air into the case at the lowest point, and the higher rear fan will pull this air over everything inside the case and extract the hottest air out of the rear. This will also create the correct pressure within the case.

If only one fan is used to extract air from the case, then it has to be drawing the air from somewhere, and without another fan drawing air into the case it will be drawn into the case from the nearest holes in the case to the fan extracting air, and so won't be very effective compared to having a two fan setup.

You mentioned the 80mm fan in your case is very noisy. This is a big problem with these smaller fans. Using the much larger 120mm fans is a much better solution. They don't have to spin as fast to draw in much more air and are therefore much quieter. Having one of these larger fans at the front and one at the rear is a great cooling setup for any case. And if your case only has 80mm mounting points you can buy cheap mounting kits to mount 120mm fans in a 80mm location.

The other cooling issue will always be the CPU heatsink and fan. One thing to make sure is that the fan is mounted the right way around on the heatsink. It should be drawing air into the heatsink, not away from it. This is because to cool properly the fan should be drawing air into the heatsink and across the fins to dissipate as much heat as possible. If you find the fan is the wrong way around and is actually blowing air up out of the heatsink then it is normally easy to just unscrew and turn the fan around.

Failing that, investing in a bigger copper heatsink with a larger quieter fan is the next option.

[Buleste]

The first thing I always check when I have an unstable PC is the System logs (right click my computer, select manage, go to System tools/Event Viewer/System) and look for any red X entries or yellow exclamation mark entries and look up the errors thay are giving in google.

I'm glad you pointed that out as I've just checked mine and found i had 3 errors. 1 I sorted out with regedit (Not advised) as there was no other way of uninstalling a faulty driver, 1 I sorted out with services and the other was a problem with ATI driver software which they can't be bothered to fix so i complained to them (ATI's response to the problem was to go back to an old, even more unstable driver). Now everything seems to be slightly tweked.

[Harrison]

It is definitely worth checking the system logs from time to time just to make sure everything is working correctly.

It is annoying regarding graphics drivers. I recently installed the game Timeshift, and it complained the graphics drivers I had installed were not new enough to run the game properly as they may cause some instability and crash the game. So I checked for updates and I am using the latest drivers. I then discovered that the game is actually looking for the latest beta drivers which have their own warning that they might not be completely stable. Great game development there, telling customers to install beta drivers or risk crashes.

Luckily I don't normally have any issues with graphics drivers or games these days, and I much say that I haven't since the early Windows 2000 days. Things have improved greatly with standardised support. Who remembers the nightmare days of Windows 9x where games had to directly support your graphics card manufacturer, or even worse, back in the DOS days when a game actually had to support the model of card.

Regarding ATi cards, a couple of years ago I was with all other gamers and a big supporter of them, with their cards offering better drivers and performance than others. But now they have fallen badly behind. Their drivers are less stable and the performance can't match other cards. nVidia cards are really the only cards to buy at the moment. My 7800GT hasn't had any issues and the drivers have always been stable. I am tempted to upgrade to a 8800 GTX in the new year though as some of the latest games are starting to push the 7800GT beyond it's limits (I have to run DiRT in 1024x768 with some of the settings on medium, otherwise the controls update about once per second and you can't steer!).