Laptop taking 20 minutes to boot up

[PeachesMcLean]

10 minutes doing the Windows XP black screen, then it thinks for a bit longer, eventually comes up with our log on page, then thinks a good bit more until it runs through its virus checks and finds the LAN. Even the little Windows tune is about a third of its normal speed.

Took 3 or 4 mins until a week ago.

Any thoughts?

could you do a restore to a day before it started to do this ? maybe something very simple.

Mine did this for a while. Not good news.

I took off loads of unnecessary software, photos etc. That helped a bit.

I think I have a virus or a trojan or some such thing.

I eventually took everything off and reinstalled windows etc. Was a PITA but it is much faster. Still takes a wee bit longer than normal but is bearable.

Perhaps a proper geek will come along and give you better advice. A bit blind leading the blind this post.

Thank you. DH has done a restore to a couple of months ago (don't do things by halves!) and it's improved slightly but not nearly to a point you'd call acceptable.

Perhaps he went too far???

He thinks it's the processor and that we'd have to get it replaced. Expensive he thinks. Anything else we can try before then?

cant think of anything else you could try,but to be honest it is just as quick to take it to a shop and get them to sort it out for you.You could be there for ages trying different things which dont work.I know when i couldnt get mine to do anything at all,it was because i needed a new hardrive.

Check the memory (www.memtest86.com). It could be that some of it has disappeared from view and the system is using lots of virtual memory (disk instead of RAM) instead.

Processors either work or don't, usually.

Check the event log for any hard disk errors, slow booting can also point to hard disk errors.

sounds like the hard drive contoller to me.. this is a sure symptom if a systom restore does not resolve...