Slow Startup

[leon032]

I have a small dilemma with one of the laptops here at my job. When the laptop is started it boots all normal but once the user signs in to Windows XP, it takes a little while for it be fully logged on. The bottom bar goes blank for a little while and after a few minutes comes back to view. Once it comes back the wireless connects and starts to run as normal. Everything is running perfect except for that little hiccup in the beginning. I thought it might have been that many programs where being loaded on startup but I disabled and the problem still persist. The person does a defragment of his hd every two weeks. He said he took it to a computer shop in Denver and they couldn’t figure it out. It’s not something serious but it is mysterious and I don’t have a clue what it might be. What you guys think?

[Michael]

How old is the laptop? And how much memory (RAM) does it have? Right click My Computer > Properties

 

When the computer is fully loaded/logged on, if you press ctrl+alt+del and open Task Manager > Performance, you can see how much memory is being used.

 

Defragmenting every two weeks will give zero performance increase. Only extremely heavy users who move, delete and create many large files would notice some benefit, but even so, it would take a fair amount of time for the hard disk to require defragging