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kochese43

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WIN XP PRO BOOT TAKES 7 MINUTES

Win XP machine with SP 2 installed suddenly takes 7 minutes to boot.  Using msconfig to boot stripped down doesn't solve it.  Turning off indexing doesn't solve it.  Defragged disk to 46% used doesn't solve it.  Whole thing started when I tried to install a 2nd 250 GB drive to go with 45 GB  boot drive.  When I added the 2nd 250 GB drive system would go through logo screen and then go black and stay that way.  Now it does the same thing with just the 45 GB drive installed.  Both 250 GB drives are identical Maxtors and 1st has worked fine for months after using big-drive program to use 48 bit addressing.

example of sequence:

2:26:30 hit restart
2:27:02 finishes saving settings
2:27:40 Logo appears
2:31:23 Logo disappears - screen goes black
2:32:09 Start restoring personal settings
2:33:15 restart complete with network
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OnsiteComputerMedics

Sounds like a bad profile...have you tried other logins?  Can you delete the possibly bad profile?
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Correct me, if I'm wrong, but don't all the symptoms I've described occur before any login occurs.  Hence no profile has been selected yet.
try going to msconfig on the boot.ini tab select bootlog reboot then find the bootlog.txt file (it may be hiden) if the c drive post it hear
Download bootvis and use it to get a graphical analysis and use it to trace boot and driver delays.
This may get you started.


Dave
Does this happen in safe mode?

Have you tried scanning for viruses?

Also, have you tried running check disk?

       chkdsk c: /r
It says restoring personal settings and then it reboots.  Whose personal settings is it restoring?  I was assuming it was a machine that auto logins.
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andymsmith18

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You're right it is an auto login, and it does say restoring personal settings, but if you look at the times this doesn't happen until 6 minutes have elapsed.  So something is screwed up before it tries to load the profile. Right?  I tried creating a new profile and I can logoff and get to it but when I restart I can't get to the login.  I've gone to the select login, logoof options screen which mentions the classic login prompt under logon options, but doesn't provide it as an option to set.  How do I turn off auto login?

I have turned system restore off and it did cut the time down to 3 minutes as long as I don't connect the 2nd disk drive.  
When I connect the 2nd disk drive, the time is still over 30 minutes.  Then when it boots the system runs so slow you can get a cup of coffe between a mouse click and its response.  

I got bootvis and ran it to optimize system.  It kept cycling on number of reboots = 1 and rebooting, over and over and over.

I was unable to make sense out of bootvis displays.  The help file is sketchy at best and assumes knowledge I don't possess.

I tried to get a boot log file using the safe mode selection, but I was unable to find any file if it was created.  I do have explorer.exe configured to show all files, but I don't know if you can trust it.

I also used msconfig and set it to create the log file which I also can not find.

Any help with the location of these log files would be appreciated.

Thanks for all your suggestions.  

Sign me a big fan of MacroScrew software.  I've re-installed WinXP from scratch at least three times and I hate the thought of having to do it all over again with all the apps I've got on the system.
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davexnet
Thanks for the suggestion I've give it a try.

I finally got the system booting in under 2 minutes with both disks installed, which I'm calling success.  I don't know exactly what was causing the problem.  One thing that seemed to make a big difference was moving some very large video files created by Studio 8 in both the All Users profile and in my profile out of the profiles into another folder.  I also had turned off indexing and restore on the drive prior to Andy's suggestion.  I found that recommendation on a link I went to for bootvis.  Running bootvis several times per the word doc Dave recommended and using it to optimize the disk finished the job.   So I gave Dave most of the points.
thanks kochese43 i have just found out that the windows xp bootlog.txt file is named Ntbtlog.txt in its placed in the c:drive nice of microsoft to change the name and not tell me