Extremley slow win 7 start

[Gregkar13]

Hi!, i have an issue in my work PC, it's an i3-3220, Corsair Vengeance 8gb DDR3 1600mhz, 500GB HDD and Win 7 64 bit. for the programs i am using it should be a rocket PC but instead suddenly for some reason it takes like 5! mins to fully start up windows, i mean from the moment i will see the win desktop until i can actually run chrome or whatever it takes aprox 5 mins. i have VERY few programs starting up with windows, apart from the basics (sound card, GPU drivers) i have only google drive, printer drivers and another work related (extremely light) app. i am checking task manager to see what is going on, and strangely everything is normal! CPU usage is 20%, and memory usage also 20% as it is trying to start everything up...
Any clues? can it be my HDD? i have this problem for the last 2! years (never bothered to post here for some reason) and at the time it started this the HDD was actually 1 year old... so i have this since the HDD was only 1 year old!

 

[Tanyac]

Have you run disk clean up, deleted the contents of your temp folder, and run a defrag?

 

[Gregkar13]

yes, have done all that, sorry i forgot to mention it

 

[aldan]

it sounds like you have a program running at startup that uses a lot of resources.check your startup programs and disable all but your antivirus and see if that makes a difference.if by chance a program that you really need doesnt start properly go back into startup and enable it.

 

[Gregkar13]

Just did that, disabled every single program in the start up menu, and nothing changed, also i used Western Digital's HDD scan tool, and also found 0 problems

 

[tigsounds]

Check device manager for yellow exclamation marks. Windows could be waiting for a hardware component to respond that isn't.

 

[aldan]

as well you could try going into troubleshooting and run a startup repair.

 

[The Paladin]

have you tried to run CCLEANER, goto tools, startup, then disable in windows and in schedule tasks anything that doesn't need to run, like chrome updater, and such programs, exit and reboot your pc see if it makes a difference.

 

[jr9]

Slow startups can have a lot of causes. In addition to other things posted here, I would try booting into safe mode (mash F8 at startup). If the PC boots into safe mode faster, it can be because you have too much software dragging the PC down at startup. In safe mode is also a good place to scan for malware, another cause of PC slowness.

 

[Gregkar13]

I have tried ALL these, literally every single thing. Programs on the startup list are: Realtek, google drive, microsoft security client, hp printer, and a tiny small work related app, that's 0 to nothing. The exact same pc used to run even proper games once upon a time with a decent gpu. My work pc techinician paid a visit, i thnk he did something, now it's a bit better but still... We think that it has something to do maybe with Microsoft SQL that's installed into this PC, or HDD is dying.

 

[The Paladin]

when it is slow, have you brought up the task manager and see where the "clog" might be ? ie ram,memory, hard drive usage ? those would give an idea of basic problems

 

[Tanyac]

ok, so maybe it's time to start looking at the hardware.

1. Update to the latest BIOS if you're not already on it.
2. Run memtest
3. Download and run Seatools (Will usually work even on non-Seagate drives) and/or acronis disk health program (both free)
4. Disconnect any external devices that are plugged in (if any) - external USB drives are known to slow down boot ups.
5. Install and run Crystal Disk Mark. Lets see what sort of results we're getting for your drive.
6. replace SATA cables and try different ports.
7. You don't say what motherboard you have. Does it have a Debug LED? If so, can you watch the codes as it boots, is it getting stuck on a particular code for a period of time (Eg B4)
8. Do you only have one 8gb memory stick? If there are two, can you try it with one, then the other.

 

[Gregkar13]

ok, so maybe it's time to start looking at the hardware.

1. Update to the latest BIOS if you're not already on it.
2. Run memtest
3. Download and run Seatools (Will usually work even on non-Seagate drives) and/or acronis disk health program (both free)
4. Disconnect any external devices that are plugged in (if any) - external USB drives are known to slow down boot ups.
5. Install and run Crystal Disk Mark. Lets see what sort of results we're getting for your drive.
6. replace SATA cables and try different ports.
7. You don't say what motherboard you have. Does it have a Debug LED? If so, can you watch the codes as it boots, is it getting stuck on a particular code for a period of time (Eg B4)
8. Do you only have one 8gb memory stick? If there are two, can you try it with one, then the other.

thanx will try these after X-mas holidays as i am away from the office.
It's an Asrock but i don't remember the model, it doesn't stuck in any code.
i have 2x4GB mem sticks.