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Aztec Driver

Aztec Driver

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Joined
Mar 7, 2005
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982
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Elizabethtown, PA
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Bryon
So tell me what I can do to speed up my computer startup procedure. It takes forever to finish its startup routine anymore. I have run Norton Antivirus, Spybot, and Ad Aware programs and have defragmented and optimized my hard drive. I now have Norton tools to optimize the startup, but am unsure as to what to disable.

Any suggestions as to what to do? Is this just an accumulation of installed programs all wanting to load and start at the same time? I do not think there are any spyware programs, but I am unsure.
 
If you are looking for a hardware upgrade that will make your computer seem like it is a brand new cutting edge modern day computer, I can not recommend installing an SSD hard disk enough. It takes my computer under 30 seconds to get to the start menu from a cold boot.
 
mry110 said:
If you are looking for a hardware upgrade that will make your computer seem like it is a brand new cutting edge modern day computer, I can not recommend installing an SSD hard disk enough. It takes my computer under 30 seconds to get to the start menu from a cold boot.
Click to expand...

14 seconds with Win7 from power on until full functionality at my homebuild box.

Bryon - get rid of norton. That's killing your startup times.
 
Aside from looking at getting rid of Norton, I'd look at removing programs from your startup altogether.

First look in the Startup folder under Programs. Anything there you're not using daily?

Then look at the programs in the System Tray. Many programs seem to put stuff there to "help" you start the program quickly, at the expense of longer logon times. Frequently there will be a Preferences setting there to keep the program from launching on startup. Where that is found differs between programs, so you'll need to look for it, if it even exists for a given program.

Once you've done both of those, you can look at stopping general background processes from stopping. Those might be a little harder to identify. I use CCleaner to select and disable or delete them. Start by disabling them and, if that goes well, you can delete them.

Beyond that, you can go into Services and stop things that you just don't use. That can be harder still, because some things aren't particularly obvious.
 
Geico266 said:
Norton is a huge memory beast.
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Depends on the version. Norton 2009 & 2010 use very little memory. I have a 5 year old PC with 2GB RAM and Celeron Processor. My PC boots and runs pretty fast.

To the Original Poster: Go to Start | Run and type MSCONFIG. Click the Startup tab. There you'll find a list of everything that starts at boot time. The optimizing process can start there. Research items then uncheck what you don't want or need anymore or uninstall the program.
 
MadseasoN said:
There you'll find a list of everything that starts at boot time. The optimizing process can start there. Research items then uncheck what you don't want or need anymore or uninstall the program.
Click to expand...
The list isn't everything - but it's a good start.
 
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