Windows very slow to load up/log in

[sm8000]

I've been working on a laptop belonging to a user at my office. It takes a very long time to startup; the initial dialog box ("Please Wait"...then "Windows (XP Pro SP1a) is starting up" below that") takes a long time to change to the "Press Ctrl+Alt+Del" box. This is regardless of whether or not the Novell Client (4.90 SP2) is installed, as well as ZenWorks Agent. After pressing Ctrl+Alt+Del, it takes a long time (say two minutes in each instance) to get to the login prompt. After that, logging in and loading the desktop are okay. During these long pauses there is little or no hard disk action.

What I have tried so far:

Uninstalling all Novell network-related software - no change

Performing a "clean boot" (disabling system.ini, win.ini, etc.) - no change

Disabling Windows Firewall for all connections - helped a little, the desktop used to take a while to load, now it's okay. I've gently reminded the user ;) not to enable said firewall.

Disabling startup entries in msconfig - didn't help much.

Disabling unneeded services - too few to make a difference.

What I haven't tried:

Ad-Aware + Spybot, etc. - doesn't seem like this would help, but what the heck.

Uninstalling SAV 8.1 Corp.- I've heard this could be a culprit.

Any other suggestions on how to get this guy's laptop to start Windows properly?

[MJCfromCT]

How many running processes are there on this laptop, and how much physical RAM does it have? In task manager, does it show CPU usage pegged at 100%?

[sm8000]

Believe it has 512MB of RAM. I gave it back to the user, so I don't have a count of running processes. The CPU doesn't get unusually hogged. However I feel the need to restress that the problems happen before we ever see the desktop.

[sm8000]

One of my admins just reminded me, a possible factor is the large amount of data he stores directly in C: and I mean literally in C: He's used 10 of his 60GB and I'd say a good portion is files for/from all his database software. If nothing else would you suspect this is the cause? I can't test whether it is or not right now, I'll have to get it from him some other time.

[Shoreguy]

I've seen slooooooow performance after my hsf went out...it held cool long enough to get past complete login before shutting down....It may be a stretch, but you may want to check out the cpu temp.

[sm8000]

Well, this HP laptop's BIOS doesn't have a hardware monitor :P and the thing is, everything works just fine once Windows gets logged in and the desktop gets loaded. Now this laptop was sent back and had its motherboard and RAM replaced due to random blue screens caused by heat issues.

[Shoreguy]

...by chance did you re-image the hdd after it came back? If it had software, databases loaded on the hdd while it was having heat issues, the os and software may have corrupted due to the heat. Have all of the drivers been updated? If the drivers to load the os were corrupted, they'd take forever to timeout while booting, and depending on the type, may not give an error, unless you've got your error logging turned on.

[sm8000]

I made an image of its then-current state before it was sent off, and installed that image when it was returned. I did notice that the LAN driver is a couple of years old, and there are newer ones available that I can try next time I'm working on his machine. I did to a repair install of XP, as well as fixboot/fixmbr, but these didn't seem to have any effect. He hasn't complained about corrupted data so I presume it's a-okay.