Extraordinarily slow startup in Win98

[JudiR]

Does anyone know how to speed up my Win 98 SE startup. The bootlog.txt is over 60kb, and windows is loading a humungous amount of drivers, many of which seem to be related to the motherboard. But Windows is also loading Smartdrv.exe. I have an EPoX EP-6VBA motherboard, a Western Digital 10Gig HD and a 20 GB Maxtor HD, 128 MB SDRAM, and a Pentium II 450 chip. I also have a 3Com Ethernet card. I already have my CD Rom set to DMA.

Shutdown is also very slow, probably because of all the junk that got loaded during startup.

[Goethe]

Try cleaning AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS for lines that you don't need. If you're not sure how just post them on here and I'll do it for you.

[Emc2]

I have the same problem on one machine. On it, there's a 6 Gig and a 540 Meg harddrive, with the smaller one being primarily for the swap file. Without the 540 drive, it's about 30 seconds faster in startup, but then I don't have enough swap file room.

[JudiR]

Thanks for the responses. Unfortunately, I tried everything suggested before turning to the BBS. That's why I can't figure out how to turn off the drivers and files, or even if I can. Much of the stuff loads before the machine even reads the autoexec and config.sys files, which are very small. My sound card requires a driver to work in DOS mode and there's one line in the autoexec for my Adobe photo shop, but otherside they're empty. The lines in the Run part of the registry run specific programs, all of which I can identify. I can't find the other files. I even did a "find" in the registry for smartdrv.exe, but it isn't there. What next?

[falcompsx]

sorry, there's nothing you can do, network cards in win98 cause this problem. it's a known and unresolved bug...until winME which is fixed(i'm using it), there's nothing you can do except sigh and wait.

[qball]

The problem amy or may not be config.sys and autoexec.bat, but they should be cleaned up anyway. Actually, they are processed iffin in the root of the primary partition in 95/98, though I don't think they are necessary.

Anyway, the first thing you need to look into is what is in your Startup folder. Start Button, Progarms, Startup. Iffin you have stuff like 'Find Fast', and 'Office Startup', you've found some unecessary overhead (especially 'Find Fast'). You basically want to keep you antivirus stuff here. So what if you find junk here, whats to do? Right click the Start button and choose Explore. In right pane expand programs and then find startup folder and then delete the shortcuts or **** that exist there (iffin you are worried about losing stuff, move it to the desktop (get it out of startup)).

If you cleaned a bunch, great, if you didn't, we still need to look further.

!!!DANGER WILL ROBINSON!!!
We are approaching editing the Registry!
It is actually easier than you expect.
Start button, Run, type Regedit, click go button.
Regedit opens.
F3 or from menu Edit, Find.
Find dialog pops up.
Type in:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Curr entVersion\Run
Ooops before hitting enter, make sure you are only searching for Keys ('Look at' groupbox), uncheck the other two.
Click find or whatever.
Now once it finds this key, you will see in the right pane all of the programs and **** winders loads on boot (kinda like run in the old win.ini days).

What you do now young Jedi is up to you. Basically, you can export that key (and it's values) and then start deleting values or you can not export key and delete values. Exporting will allow you to import that key back after you delete all the values and you PC isn't working normal. Or you can experiment, delete a key, reboot, delete a key, reboot.... Until the beer and pizza and ammo run out...

If you need more help, ask...

[fvay]

there's an easier way
type msconfig in widnows command line. uncheck unwanted startup programs. click OK (or whatever). Force restart of your computer of course.(where's my freedom Bill?) http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif