leedogg

I have this wierd problem where it takes FOREVER to launch applications for the first time, and then it seems to speed up slightly on multiple launches. Reboot and its back to incredibly long launch times...

any suggestions?

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VenomXt

how much ram you have?

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kcnychief

This is also a feature within XP, but not really anything you should notice on the scale that you do. There is something called Prefetch which will allow this to happen. Real long, but great read...

http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/is...l/default.aspx

I second, how much RAM do you have?

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leedogg

I have 1 Gig of ram =( and EnablePrefetcher is set to 3. I cant figure out what else it could be...

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kcnychief

can you get a screenshot of the task manager when your computer first boots?

Is it the same wait time if you run an app right after boot compared to if you login and wait a few minutes?

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leedogg

I'm talking about long wait times, long after I boot up. I was watching my task manager and it seems like the first time i launch a certain app, it shoots up to 100% cpu, and hovers there until it launches, the 2nd and 3rd time it only goes to 80% or so...

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kcnychief

Have you scanned for spyware and viruses?

Any rogue services running?

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LeeJend

1) How long is long. App name and amount of seconds.

2) Have you defragmented your disk?

3) Is the disk a 7200 RPM

4) Is the disk capable of UDMA and the controller set to run UDMA?

5) Do you have your system and program files on a small seperate partition from your data or is everything on one huge partition?

5a) Check the spyware thing

5b) Are the program files on a seperate HD that needs to spin up when you load a new application?

6) Are you just getting too much caffiene maybe...

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leedogg

Yeah, I'm pretty sure I'm clean of all that stuff. Some rare mystery virus is always a possibility, but I dont think so...any other settings/tweaks which affect application launch times?

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leedogg

Its a 60gb ibm deskstar. yes its 7200. How can I check if its udma?

/edit nm found it, yeah primary channel is udma mode 5 for both device 0 & 1

System and program files on same hd (C). I defrag fairly often. think i just did one 2-3 weeks ago.

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LeeJend

If it's 7200 it should be UDMA. Make sure that the Bios is set to use UDMA. I swear it used to say if you are running udma under device manager but I can not find it now. And you need the 80 pin (stiff) cable from MB to HD to run UDMA and ATA100.

I'll keep looking for where to check the drive speed settings

FOund ti. It's under device manager, ide controllers, right click properties and select the Primary channel tab. Should say ultra dma 5 100 ata (or 133 if your system supports it).

And if you have a cd/dvd on the secodn port on channel one it will slow the HD down. optical drives should be on IDE1 by themselves. HD on IDE 0.

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leedogg

hmm maybe i'll move the cd burner to another channel, its sharing my primary channel now...thanks for the suggestion

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Steevo

Modern boards support dual speed channels, so the CD??? shouldn't be a problem. But the cable might well be a factor in transfer. I have seen too many branded PC's that scrimp in the most minute of areas. Go to start-run and type this "perfmon.msc" w/o the quote marks. The blue line is your hard disk activity, or in queue length. What is the peak and average when you try to load the application and any other programs?

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leedogg

Avg was like 400, max was 804.010, peak was 100% over the entire delay period. That blue line is often peaking during my application launches...I think that may be it. what does that tell me?

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