XP sp3 Dell Precision M4400 250G HD(68% unused), 2.5ghz, 4.0ghb, quad processor, IE8. Do not have WAUACLT. Use ZoneAlarm anti virus/firewall, scan for spyware and virus daily with ZA and Advanced System Protector.XP is taking longer and longer to start up. I have read the thread regarding MS Update v. Windows Update, but that is not my issue. Taking 6 minutes to fully boot, the time is all spent after the desktop appears and over 5 minutes spent to get shortcuts/icons and function. I have done the clean boot, it boots quickly in the v2 style clean boot (no system services).I have run a bootlog, and have screen shots of the timing and time to open for all startup items. However, not sure how to post those here. From the boot log I cannot tell what is taking all the time, it seems there are several startup items which are taking a long time but I am not familiar enough with the file names to know what they are.Thanks in advance for any help that might be offered. 1 person needs an answerI do too

Screenshots of boot log:

I would forget the old fashioned bootlog - there are more modern ways to measure boot time and the bootlog will probably not contribute much to resolving your situation (too complicated). We can certainly measure your boot time and see what you might be able to do about it though after this.You may be exacerbating things with your ZA installation - especially if you installed it out of the box (or download) with all options enabled. If you also are using the ZA firewall, it will do battle with the built in XP firewall, so you need to pick one or the other, but never two firewalls at the same time (unless you want performance issues to figure out). The XP firewall is adequate for most home users though.If I had your system in front of me to fix, I would uninstall ZA completely, reboot and then see how things look and if you are still compelled to use ZA, reinstall it a little differently. Enabling everything ZA has to offer is sometimes not a good idea. More protection comes with a cost and that cost is performance.I would just not use ZA at all on any system (performance issues if you don't "understand" it and spend some time tweaking it) and use something else with a smaller footprint that uses less overhead in terms of CPU and memory. Some people love it though. Depending on your version of ZA, you may also discover you have suddenly seem to have no System Restore Points anymore since one version not too long ago deletes them all for you, but that has been resolve allegedly.Ah... here are some notes I have: Which version of Zone Alarm are you using? If it's 9.1.507.000, you need to either update to 9.1.603.000 (or later) or downgrade to 9.1.008.000. There are a number of authenticated problems with 9.1.507.000 on XP machines, one of which is losing prior restore points every day. Try the ZA forums for more info: http://forums.zonealarm.com/Now onto screenshots.Here are some ideas for how to do screenshots, and a method proven to work.To create and email/post/print a screenshot:Press the Print Scrn button to copy your entire screen to the Windows clipboard.Press Alt Print Scrn to copy just the active window to the Windows clipboard.Open MS Paint:Click Start, Programs, Accessories, PaintWhen Paint opens, press CTRL-V to paste the clipboard, save the new Paint file to your desktop or someplace you can remember. JPG files take up less hard disk space than BMP files and are just as readable. Make as many screenshots as you need. Practice makes perfect. Be careful your screenshot does not contain any personal information. Practice viewing your images before you upload them to be sure they are okay.Some sites will let you attach a file directly to your post. If the site has some kind of attachment/upload function it is usually easiest just to use it. If there is no such function in your message board to upload files, then use a free third party image hosting WWW site.Create a free account on some free picture hosting web site. You can always remove your account later if you want. Here are some free image hosting sites:http://www.imageshack.us/http://photobucket.com/Using your free account, upload your screenshot(s) (the JPG or BMP files) to the site and it will return to you a URL web address (a Direct Link) for your new image(s) which you can paste the Direct Link in a message post, email, etc.Post that Direct Link web address back here in your response and we can click on the link address and see your screenshot. Post as many as you need - the sites are free.When you are done, what you post for others to use should look something like this Direct Link to a screen shot of my poor Task Manager:http://img96.imageshack.us/img96/6530/taskmanagerv.jpgIf you want to include your Task Manager, add the Virtual Memory column to the display then make the shot as I did. Here is how to do that:Right click the Taskbar, choose Task Manager and select the Processes tab. Click View, Select Columns, check the box that says: Virtual Memory Size. Expand the height and width of the Task Manager by dragging the corners and edges so you can see all the columns and processes in one window if possible. Don't guess what the problem might be - figure it out and fix it. I need YOUR votes and points for helpful replies and Propose as Answers. I am saving up for a pony!

I would forget the old fashioned bootlog - there are more modern ways to measure boot time and the bootlog will probably not contribute much to resolving your situation (too complicated). We can certainly measure your boot time and see what you might be able to do about it though after this.You may be exacerbating things with your ZA installation - especially if you installed it out of the box (or download) with all options enabled. If you also are using the ZA firewall, it will do battle with the built in XP firewall, so you need to pick one or the other, but never two firewalls at the same time (unless you want performance issues to figure out). The XP firewall is adequate for most home users though.If I had your system in front of me to fix, I would uninstall ZA completely, reboot and then see how things look and if you are still compelled to use ZA, reinstall it a little differently. Enabling everything ZA has to offer is sometimes not a good idea. More protection comes with a cost and that cost is performance.I would just not use ZA at all on any system (performance issues if you don't "understand" it and spend some time tweaking it) and use something else with a smaller footprint that uses less overhead in terms of CPU and memory. Some people love it though. Depending on your version of ZA, you may also discover you have suddenly seem to have no System Restore Points anymore since one version not too long ago deletes them all for you, but that has been resolve allegedly.Ah... here are some notes I have: Which version of Zone Alarm are you using? If it's 9.1.507.000, you need to either update to 9.1.603.000 (or later) or downgrade to 9.1.008.000. There are a number of authenticated problems with 9.1.507.000 on XP machines, one of which is losing prior restore points every day. Try the ZA forums for more info: http://forums.zonealarm.com/Now onto screenshots.Here are some ideas for how to do screenshots, and a method proven to work.To create and email/post/print a screenshot:Press the Print Scrn button to copy your entire screen to the Windows clipboard.Press Alt Print Scrn to copy just the active window to the Windows clipboard.Open MS Paint:Click Start, Programs, Accessories, PaintWhen Paint opens, press CTRL-V to paste the clipboard, save the new Paint file to your desktop or someplace you can remember. JPG files take up less hard disk space than BMP files and are just as readable. Make as many screenshots as you need. Practice makes perfect. Be careful your screenshot does not contain any personal information. Practice viewing your images before you upload them to be sure they are okay.Some sites will let you attach a file directly to your post. If the site has some kind of attachment/upload function it is usually easiest just to use it. If there is no such function in your message board to upload files, then use a free third party image hosting WWW site.Create a free account on some free picture hosting web site. You can always remove your account later if you want. Here are some free image hosting sites:http://www.imageshack.us/http://photobucket.com/Using your free account, upload your screenshot(s) (the JPG or BMP files) to the site and it will return to you a URL web address (a Direct Link) for your new image(s) which you can paste the Direct Link in a message post, email, etc.Post that Direct Link web address back here in your response and we can click on the link address and see your screenshot. Post as many as you need - the sites are free.When you are done, what you post for others to use should look something like this Direct Link to a screen shot of my poor Task Manager:http://img96.imageshack.us/img96/6530/taskmanagerv.jpgIf you want to include your Task Manager, add the Virtual Memory column to the display then make the shot as I did. Here is how to do that:Right click the Taskbar, choose Task Manager and select the Processes tab. Click View, Select Columns, check the box that says: Virtual Memory Size. Expand the height and width of the Task Manager by dragging the corners and edges so you can see all the columns and processes in one window if possible. Don't guess what the problem might be - figure it out and fix it. I need YOUR votes and points for helpful replies and Propose as Answers. I am saving up for a pony!

I would forget the old fashioned bootlog - there are more modern ways to measure boot time and the bootlog will probably not contribute much to resolving your situation (too complicated). We can certainly measure your boot time and see what you might be able to do about it though after this.You may be exacerbating things with your ZA installation - especially if you installed it out of the box (or download) with all options enabled. If you also are using the ZA firewall, it will do battle with the built in XP firewall, so you need to pick one or the other, but never two firewalls at the same time (unless you want performance issues to figure out). The XP firewall is adequate for most home users though.If I had your system in front of me to fix, I would uninstall ZA completely, reboot and then see how things look and if you are still compelled to use ZA, reinstall it a little differently. Enabling everything ZA has to offer is sometimes not a good idea. More protection comes with a cost and that cost is performance.I would just not use ZA at all on any system (performance issues if you don't "understand" it and spend some time tweaking it) and use something else with a smaller footprint that uses less overhead in terms of CPU and memory. Some people love it though. Depending on your version of ZA, you may also discover you have suddenly seem to have no System Restore Points anymore since one version not too long ago deletes them all for you, but that has been resolve allegedly.Ah... here are some notes I have: Which version of Zone Alarm are you using? If it's 9.1.507.000, you need to either update to 9.1.603.000 or downgrade to 9.1.008.000. There are a number of authenticated problems with 9.1.507.000 on XP machines, one of which is losing prior restore points every day. Try the ZA forums for more info: http://forums.zonealarm.com/Now onto screenshots.Here are some ideas for how to do screenshots, and a method proven to work.To create and email/post/print a screenshot:Press the Print Scrn button to copy your entire screen to the Windows clipboard.Press Alt Print Scrn to copy just the active window to the Windows clipboard.Open MS Paint:Click Start, Programs, Accessories, PaintWhen Paint opens, press CTRL-V to paste the clipboard, save the new Paint file to your desktop or someplace you can remember. JPG files take up less hard disk space than BMP files and are just as readable. Make as many screenshots as you need. Practice makes perfect. Be careful your screenshot does not contain any personal information. Practice viewing your images before you upload them to be sure they are okay.Some sites will let you attach a file directly to your post. If the site has some kind of attachment/upload function it is usually easiest just to use it. If there is no such function in your message board to upload files, then use a free third party image hosting WWW site.Create a free account on some free picture hosting web site. You can always remove your account later if you want. Here are some free image hosting sites:http://www.imageshack.us/http://photobucket.com/Using your free account, upload your screenshot(s) (the JPG or BMP files) to the site and it will return to you a URL web address (a Direct Link) for your new image(s) which you can paste the Direct Link in a message post, email, etc.Post that Direct Link web address back here in your response and we can click on the link address and see your screenshot. Post as many as you need - the sites are free.When you are done, what you post for others to use should look something like this Direct Link to a screen shot of my poor Task Manager:http://img96.imageshack.us/img96/6530/taskmanagerv.jpgIf you want to include your Task Manager, add the Virtual Memory column to the display then make the shot as I did. Here is how to do that:Right click the Taskbar, choose Task Manager and select the Processes tab. Click View, Select Columns, check the box that says: Virtual Memory Size. Expand the height and width of the Task Manager by dragging the corners and edges so you can see all the columns and processes in one window if possible. Don't guess what the problem might be - figure it out and fix it. I need YOUR votes and points for helpful replies and Propose as Answers. I am saving up for a pony!

I completely agree with you JoseIbarra. I could name a couple of others that fall into this catagory.I had a similar problem where my computer was going slower and slower. It turned out to be XP setting the transfer mode for my hard drive to PIO. Apparently XP can do this if it thinks there is a problem with the drive. Anyway the solution was to uninstall the IDE controller for that drive and then let XP reinstall the controller. This would reset the controller to the maximum transfer mode for that drive. ie UDMA mode 5. I am not saying this is the cause of the problem but it is a quick and easy method to find out if the hard drive is the cause.

Yeah - the PIO/DMA thing I know about too (and sometime forget about), but when the ZA word comes up for antiwhatevers (or the big M or the big N), I think I will start there!That is a good thing to check though and here is how to do that: If you are using IDE drives, use Device Manager to verify the transfer mode of the IDE channels is set to something like DMA if available (depends on your hardware) and not the slower PIO mode. PIO is the slowest, DMA is the fastest.This is easy to check and generally easy to fix and the mode would not have changed by itself, so if it has changed to PIO, change it to DMA and then figure out why it changed and fix it. To launch the Device Manger console, click Start, Run and in the box enter:%SystemRoot%\system32\devmgmt.mscClick OK.Expand the IDE/ATA controller section to see your IDE channels. Right click each, choose Properties, and for each channel that has an Advanced Settings tab, determine the Transfer Mode. There are usually 4 channels to check in a desktop, maybe fewer for laptops.The fastest selection will be some DMA option/selection and NOT PIO (usually: DMA if available). If it is PIO, change it to DMA.If you are not sure about what you see post back for help and advice.Follow this up with a reboot to make sure any changes stick.What may have caused the change?http://support.microsoft.com/kb/817472 Don't guess what the problem might be - figure it out and fix it. I need YOUR votes and points for helpful replies and Propose as Answers. I am saving up for a pony!

Yeah - the PIO/DMA thing I know about too (and sometime forget about), but when the ZA word comes up for antiwhatevers (or the big M or the big N), I think I will start there!That is a good thing to check though and here is how to do that: If you are using IDE drives, use Device Manager to verify the transfer mode of the IDE channels is set to something like DMA if available (depends on your hardware) and not the slower PIO mode. PIO is the slowest, DMA is the fastest.This is easy to check and generally easy to fix and the mode would not have changed by itself, so if it has changed to PIO, change it to DMA and then figure out why it changed and fix it. To launch the Device Manger console, click Start, Run and in the box enter:%SystemRoot%\system32\devmgmt.mscClick OK.Expand the IDE/ATA controller section to see your IDE channels. Right click each, choose Properties, and for each channel that has an Advanced Settings tab, determine the Transfer Mode. There are usually 4 channels to check in a desktop, maybe fewer for laptops.The fastest selection will be some DMA option/selection and NOT PIO (usually: DMA if available). If it is PIO, change it to DMA.If you are not sure about what you see post back for help and advice.Follow this up with a reboot to make sure any changes stick.What may have caused the change?http://support.microsoft.com/kb/817472 Don't guess what the problem might be - figure it out and fix it. I need YOUR votes and points for helpful replies and Propose as Answers. I am saving up for a pony!

I mentioned the uninstall of the IDE controller because when I had my problem the "DMA if available" wasn't available. The uninstall was the only way to make it available again.I sometimes wonder why people bother with the big antiwhatevers when there are a few free antiwhatevers available that do the job just as well.If you think my answers are helpful please vote and mark as possible answer. Thank you.

I mentioned the uninstall of the IDE controller because when I had my problem the "DMA if available" wasn't available. The uninstall was the only way to make it available again.I sometimes wonder why people bother with the big antiwhatevers when there are a few free antiwhatevers available that do the job just as well.If you think my answers are helpful please vote and mark as possible answer. Thank you.

Just returned from a "computer free" vacation and noticed your reply. Thanks, I will try that. My ZA is on auto-update but will check to be sure the version is the latest. Also noticed my screen shot does not appear to have worked. Will try that again.I tried removing ZA from the startup list, it started anyway.As an attorney and online market trader I need the best FW and AV protection available. At the time I went to ZA their firewall was second to none and the AV was above average. Now I am not so sure as ZA has not detected a single spyware cookie or virus in the past 6 months and yet when I run Advanced System Protector it has detected several.

I only show a single Ricoh SD/MMC Host Controller under the IDE/ATA section. Only available tabs or it are General, Driver, Detals and Resources. No Advanced Settings tab. Under Details, Device Instance ID has a long list, but no Transfer Mode.Where did I go wrong?

Here is the ZA version info, appears I do have the latest. And, I only use the ZA firewall, not both MS and ZA.ZoneAlarm Security Suite version:9.3.014.000TrueVector version:9.3.014.000Driver version:9.1.522.000Anti-virus engine version:8.0.2.48Anti-virus signature DAT file version:1027175936AntiSpam version:6.0.0.2383ZoneAlarm Browser Security 1.5.152.10ZoneAlarm ForceField Spyware Scanner 1.5.53.209ZoneAlarm ForceField Anti-Phishing Database 1.2.104.0ZoneAlarm ForceField Spyware Sites Database 04.130

Firstly the host controller you have mentioned is in relation to memory cards not HDD. Have you tried to scan for hardware changes to see if your harddrive is detected? If the drive is not detected correctly by XP the relevant drivers will not be installed and the drive will be operating in basic mode. If this is the case then it could be a hardware problem either with the HDD or motherboard.Secondly you mention that Advanced System Protector has detected several infections. Have these been cleared by ASP. I would suggest performing additional scans with other AV providers. Some provide online scans that do not require any software purchases. Kaspersky is one that I know of. If anything it won't do any harm. No AV is 100% effective and what one misses the other can catch. At the end of the day it is down to your own personnal preference. I use a free one called Avast. (Only for home use - to use Avast in a commercial setting you need to purchase their professional version.) I have found this AV to be very good for my use and have only had one infection which was more down to my own stupidity rather than Avasts fault.If you think my answers are helpful please vote and mark as possible answer. Thank you.

Firstly the host controller you have mentioned is in relation to memory cards not HDD. Have you tried to scan for hardware changes to see if your harddrive is detected? If the drive is not detected correctly by XP the relevant drivers will not be installed and the drive will be operating in basic mode. If this is the case then it could be a hardware problem either with the HDD or motherboard.Secondly you mention that Advanced System Protector has detected several infections. Have these been cleared by ASP. I would suggest performing additional scans with other AV providers. Some provide online scans that do not require any software purchases. Kaspersky is one that I know of. If anything it won't do any harm. No AV is 100% effective and what one misses the other can catch. At the end of the day it is down to your own personnal preference. I use a free one called Avast. (Only for home use - to use Avast in a commercial setting you need to purchase their professional version.) I have found this AV to be very good for my use and have only had one infection which was more down to my own stupidity rather than Avasts fault.If you think my answers are helpful please vote and mark as possible answer. Thank you.

The infections were cleared by ASP. I figured using two AV programs would be adequate, but will check out another to be safe.The hard drive does not appear to be detected by a scan for new hardware. But the category names are not familiar and I do not recognize what category might include a hard drive. It does not appear to be detected.Could you walk me through the process of having XP detect my HD and install the proper dirvers? I am trying to figure out which HD Dell installed, but their information is much less than helpful and does not state the name of the manufacturer. Thanks.

The infections were cleared by ASP. I figured using two AV programs would be adequate, but will check out another to be safe.The hard drive does not appear to be detected by a scan for new hardware. But the category names are not familiar and I do not recognize what category might include a hard drive. It does not appear to be detected.Could you walk me through the process of having XP detect my HD and install the proper dirvers? I am trying to figure out which HD Dell installed, but their information is much less than helpful and does not state the name of the manufacturer. Thanks.

I located the HD using Device Manager, and it says "This device is working properly". Should I uninstall the driver and restart the computer hoping Windows will detect the HD and reinstall the driver?

I located the HD using Device Manager, and it says "This device is working properly". Should I uninstall the driver and restart the computer hoping Windows will detect the HD and reinstall the driver?

After spending several hours scanning the internet last night I am convinced my slow startup (and other symptoms I had not previously connected with the slow startup issue such as choppy sound and jittery HDD performance at times) are the result of the HDD not using IDE. I also read that with Dell computers using RAID may affect use of the IDE. I doubt I have any loose connections inside the laptop, it has never been opened or dropped. How can I restore the IDE/ATAPI port driver?

After spending several hours scanning the internet last night I am convinced my slow startup (and other symptoms I had not previously connected with the slow startup issue such as choppy sound and jittery HDD performance at times) are the result of the HDD not using IDE. I also read that with Dell computers using RAID may affect use of the IDE. I doubt I have any loose connections inside the laptop, it has never been opened or dropped. How can I restore the IDE/ATAPI port driver?