Win 98 Laptop slow bootup

there is several things you can, 1 is to buy more memory, I would recommend to go to 48 to 64 megs or 96 MEGS at least, from what you are now, Win98 itself uses a lot more memory than WIN95;besides, you need more memory to run program unless you just want to run WIN98 and not any application. The laptop will run faster with more RAM,the Hd is swaping a file and it is using the HD which is slower than RAM many times, Buy more Memory and Upgrade. Also, if you want to get back to FAT without formatting, use PARTITION MAGIC 4.0, which cost $50 bucks,and converts FAT to FAT32 and Viceversa without formatting the HD so you can keep your data safely and do not loose anything BUT for doing the FAT conversion you will need more memory the program runs in PC that has at least 32 MEGS of RAM for DOING PArtition and Convertion to OTher formats. SO the main thing is BUY more MEMORY. from my own experience, WIn98 and Application will run very well in 64 MEGS,that means that it almost uses all the RAM, I believe it just leave about 4 to 8 megs free, meaning that if you run Intense application, you will need a lot more, having more than 64 MEgs of RAM, about 96 megs, will avoid that the system be slow,that run faster, can run all applications, and your LAtop would not have Death Blue of Screen due to LOW system MEmory. Give it a try, Software fix is not the solution,you need to invest in more RAM that would make it faster.one other thing, you will be better using fat32 than fat, fat32 uses 4 kb cluster and save space in your HD. fat uses at least 8 kb below 500 megs,16 above 528 to 1023 megs, and it uses 32 kb above partition over 1024 meaning that fat can waste space more than fat32. fat32 will save you space,but wont make run any faster your pc. you have the choice of trying and see which suit better for your need. CIAO

Thanks for the info re: partition magic, but although this laptop is not a barnburner speed wise, when it boots correctly it is acceptable.  It ran win95 with absolutely no problems.  Win98 ran fine until I switched to fat32 and optimized program launch during defrag. In fact the first couple of boot ups after fat 32 conversion were seemed significantly faster than win95.  While I'm not positive that the problem is with fat32, it seems to be an unlikely coincidence.  This is an intermitent problem, and does not happen on every bootup.  1 out of 5 boots it boots in under minute and a half.  The other 4 out of 5 times it takes 20 minutes.  Anyone have this problem with a Toshiba laptop?  

As an update to this question I defragmented the hard drive without choosing the "speed up app launch" and it seems to be functioning correctly now.  Apparently this laptop does not like that option.  Still wondering whether anyone else has had this problem with Toshiba laptops and WIN98 w/ FAT32.

donintenn,

My technicians deal with a lot of different laptops and this is somehting I have never heard about with Toshiba systems.  Since you seemed to have answered your own question you can goto Customer Service on Main Page and submit a zero point message to get your points back.

Happy Holidays,
-Krantz

Well, I thought I had it figured out.  After 5 or 6 successful boots in a row yesterday, this morning it been in the boot process for 20 minutes and counting.  This computer will boot in under 2 mins one time and then take 20 minutes the next.  I never get any error messages, safe boot screen, gpf's. I've checked the bootlog and other than the devices the MS site says might have a loadfail because they're not used, nothing seems out of the ordinary. When it doesn't boot correctly the hd light will be on for long periods of time with no noise from the hd.  When WIN98 finally starts after one of these slow boots, everything runs in slow motion.  Everything still works, but hd access is at a crawl. Every time it needs to access the hd, the hd will run for a sec and then stop run for a second then stop, rather than the normal almost constant hd noise heard when it boots normally.  Info about the computer is as follows:

Toshiba 400cs
Pentium 75 w/ BIOS v5.60
16 meg ram
Win98 w/ FAT 32
Notworthy 28.8 PCMICA card modem
IC Card PCMCIA nic

I know this is a wierd question, but I'm stumped.  I've checked MS knowledge base and Toshiba site with no luck so far.