HPLovecraft

Hi All

Today I had to replace my Toshiba laptop L300 with an L350 after an accident involving a glass of wine

Both machines came with Vista Home Premium pre-installed.

Now, the old machine used to boot in about 40 secs - but this new one gets stuck for ages at a blue screen with a 'please wait' message in the middle of the screen for about 2 mins. Once booted the machine is fine. I'm not really a computer buff but I managed to find the event log which shows a warning but no real details. The timings are as follows

BootStartTime: 20:51:38
BootEndTime: 20:55:14

BootTime: 49437
MainPathBootTime: 25137
BootPostBootTime: 24300
BootPrefetchInitTime: 42481

I can give more details if it would help, I was wondering if anyone has had/has a similar issue ?

beanys

iTrader: (3)

There are a number of this things that cause this like the amount on memory the computers have also what programs at the start up you have running
if you go to run then msconfig and then boot tab you can disable certian boot up programs to speed it up
hope this helps a little mate
cheers beanys

bioforger

iTrader: (1)

If your lappy has a dual core cpu you can also speedup the boot time by using both cores on boot. Goto Msconfig again/Boot/Advanced Options/Number of processors, set it to 2 or however many cores you have.

Also look at the number of services running, google for ones which are safe to disable or set to manual. It sometimes help.

HPLovecraft

Thanks for your replys guys

The funny thing is the software is identical to the package that came with the L300 - when I used to boot that machine I wouldn't get the blue screen at all - it was a black screen with a yellow progress bar that used to do about 8 passes then go straight to the log-on screen and from there immediately into the desktop with little delay. Now, the new machine does the 8 passes on the yellow bar as before, then a windows logo appears with the boop-boop-beep-beep start noise, then the blue screen appears with the please wait message for ages (lots of disk activity) before I get to the log on screen. It concerned me that there is a warning in the event log and the total boot time (BootEndTime-BootStartTime) is about 3 min 56 secs, but I can't see if its one thing imparticular that is causing the delay. Is it possible to generate a more detailed boot log so I can narrow it down ? I hate computer problems

I set it to use 2 processors on start-up and got rid of google-desktop and unchecked something called google-EULA launcher from the start-up programs but this made no difference. What is EULA anyways - its not in the installed programs list ?

Iain Young

EULA - End User License Agreement. No idea what the goodle one does, but I suspect you've got the google toolbar installed?

HPLovecraft

I uninstalled google desktop using add/remove programs - but I think the EULA entry was still there afterwards on the start-up program list. I'll check if it's still there tonight when I get in. It's annoying sitting watching a blue circle for what seems like ever ! If it's still there how do I remove it ?

BTW I'm not saying I think the EULA thing is causing the problem - it's just annoying having google crap installed when I didn't ask for it.

I'll do some surfing today and see if anyone else is having this issue with the blue start-up screen delay.

Thnx guys.

ChefDude

The suggestions above are only small time savers - you have an errored task starting somewhere and vista, by default, has a long timeout period.

You need to get into the Event Viewer logs to work out where the boot time is going.

have you checked there are no orphaned devices in the device manager?

vista's got loads of ways to diagnose things, but for the moment check the event logs

HPLovecraft

Thanks

I'll check the device manager and the logs

any particular log I should be looking in ? theres a huge list of them.

bioforger

iTrader: (1)

Right click computer/manage

Under Event Viewer look at the windows logs, specifically system. Look at the errors.

Also try booting into safemode and see if it still takes minutes. If it doesn't then you know it's a software issue. Unlikely but worth a shot.

HPLovecraft

OK it boots in 35 secs when I select safe mode !

I cleared the windows/system log and rebooted

In the Windows/System log there is only one error:

UNABLE TO INITILISE THE SECURITY PACKAGE KERBEROS FOR SERVER SIDE AUTHENTICATION

Event ID 15016 ? HTTP Service Authentication

But there is still a warning in the applications/microsoft/windows/diagnostics/performance:

Warning 29/11/2008 14:18:02 Diagnostics-Performance 100 Boot Performance Monitoring

BootStartTime: 14:14:22
BootEndTime: 14:18:00

I'm at a loss !

bioforger

iTrader: (1)

The 1st error can be ignored, you get that if you aren't connected to a domain.

If it was me I would format it now, and reinstall Vista and my apps 1 by 1 to see what is causing the issue.

Rob_Impreza99

iTrader: (3)

I am in the same boat, i`m using windows vista ultimate 32 bit.

My laptop starts normally but then i get a massive pause inbetween the green indicator loading bar and the vista globe where the next page is your log in page if you have set a password.

What happens after the green indicator loading bar is i get a grey screen then it flashes to a solid black screen and stays there for a over a minute without doing anything, my hard drive indicator will come from a solid orange colour thats working none stop at start up to just a murmour sort of flicker every now and then during that blank part where i just get a black screen.

Any ideas ?

bioforger

iTrader: (1)

Have you both applied SP1 ? If so remove it and retry

HPLovecraft

Ok I used MSConfig to kill all the start-up programs apart from

Synaptics Pointing Device
HDAudio Control Panel
McAfee Security Center
Realtek Voice Manager

I Killed

Toshiba Flash Cards
Adobe Acrobat
Chicony Traybar (Camera related)
Cffenc Enabler (Toshiba)
Google EULA launcher
Intel Common User Interface (3 occurences-all GFX card related)
Toshiba Button Support
Config Free Tray (Toshiba)
Java Platform SE6 U7
Toshiba Vista Registration Component
Toshiba Tempro
Windows Defender
Toshiba Power Saver
Toshiba Online Product Information
Toshiba Zooming Utility

Still get the long pause at the Blue 'please wait' screen and the errors from the boot-up and shut down diagnostics, but the total boot time is now 2 min 40 secs so its come down a little bit.

Still long compared to the other machine though. How about the Services Tab are there things in there I could disable ?

I'm glad (in a way) that i'm not the only one having issues !

bioforger

iTrader: (1)

2mins 40 isn't that bad really

HPLovecraft

You're right...

I'm like a dog with a bone though - it niggles me !

oh well I suppose it gives me time to make a coffee while it boots

I'll keep chipping away at it now and again

and also ask my mate who is an comp engineer next time hes over

thnx for trying to help m8

bioforger

iTrader: (1)

I know what he'll say, format and reinstall

wwp8

all this reminded me of the topgear episode when they had an average car (espace?) and tried to mod it to beat the lancer's lap record

HPLovecraft

The Vista event ID is 100 from the boot/shutdown performance monitor.

Still don't know the cause though

from a google search it seems like others are having the same error.

Might try a repair tonight.

Chris L

A couple of good things to read and digest..

There's a lot of myth and misinformation about making PCs run faster (the 'select both cores of your CPU' being one of the most common.

Have a read of the article here and then go through this site - this guy has spent years tweaking PCs and has a very comprehensive guide to the changes that you can and should make. Well worth a read.

Chris

bioforger

iTrader: (1)

Er excuse me, but when I turned the dual core cpu boot option on, it cut my boot time by 10seconds, so certainly not 'misinformation' as you put it I don't care what that website says, it worked for me.