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Long app startup delays

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by adams

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I'm running Home Premium x64 on a self-built system with 4 GB RAM, an Nvidia 8500GT and a 2.3 GHz Athlon 64x2 4400+ Brisbane on a Gigabyte M57SLI-S4 mobo. For a while everything went great and the machine really screamed, but recently it's developed a lag when loading apps. It could be anything I try to open, no specific programs.
When I open [whatever], there's often a delay of up to a minute before the app displays. The little blue-green "loading" ring will appear for a few seconds as always, then disappear but the app isn't there for a while. Anyone have any ideas on that?

6 replies

by thumbsup2

Fire up the task manager and watch to see what processes are running when you start an application. It may well be your antivirus software doing a scan before the application can be started.

by nepenthe0

Background tasks, services, and applications are the likely culprits. TR has some excellent guidelines for selectively disabling startup services:

http://tinyurl.com/3qmdg8

Regarding background tasks, review the Task Manager list at:

http://www.processlibrary.com/

If you have access to [i]msconfig.exe[/i], selectively disable all unneeded startup tasks. If you don't have access to [i]msconfig.exe[/i], Spybot Search & Destroy has a [i]Tools[/i] menu that allows you to reversibly disable startup tasks.

I know this is controversial, but I don't use AV software. This stuff transforms an otherwise excellent machine into molasses. For the past 8 years, my computers have run blazingly fast without AV applications, and I have never incurred passive malware attacks with just the Windows Firewall and my NAT router for protection.

Rick/Portland, OR

by older mycroft

That you have [i]never incurred passive malware attacks[/i] if you cannot detect them?

That sentiment is ludicrous in the extreme.

by borginva

Do also check to make sure nothing extra is starting up. Use MSCONFIG and http://www.mlin.net/index.shtml. You can cleanup MSCONFIG too easily with http://www.get-in-control.com/msconfig-cleanup.

Do some online virus/'wares checks too.
http://security.symantec.com/sscv6/default.asp?langid=ie&venid=sym
http://www.kaspersky.com/scanforvirus
http://www.bitdefender.com/scan8/ie.html
http://housecall.trendmicro.com/uk/
http://www.spywareguide.com/onlinescan.php

Extra, manual protection.

Just some extra things to do to make sure nothing is starting up when it should now. If you find anything, I got a list of free programs to use to clean up thy 'wares, if you find any.

by adams

There's nothing running that any scanner can see and I've even turned off all of the eye-candy to free up resources. I've turned off everything except explorer and get the same behavior.

I appreciate the replies, but I've recently gone back to XP Pro and the machine screams. I suspect there may have been some conflict in the hardware/software interface. Maybe a seek problem with the HDD under Vista64?

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