Re: Slow boot

Don

I think I have found a solution to your Dr Watson log. You can delete it
but this will deprive you of the advantage of the tool should you need
it at a future time. The solution is to select Start, All Programs,
Accessories, System Tools, System Information, Tools, Dr Watson and
uncheck the box before "Append to existing log". This means the next
time a log is written it will overwrite rather than add to the existing
file.

Logs starting with KB e.g. KB941561.log are installation logs for
Windows updates. They are only needed if installation fails and the user
needs to investigate the reason for failure. Unless you have failed
updates they are safe to delete. KB Articles used to have a Q prefix
before the Article number but Microsoft abandoned the practice a few
years ago. Open one using Notepad and compare the contents with say
KB941561.log to see if it is an installation log. I suspect it is. I
have no installation logs before October 2007 so I cannot check on my
machine.

Your drive / partition set up is involved and my last involvement with
Unix was 15 years ago and in those days I did not look under the bonnet.

You probably can win something with System Restore. It is likely that an
allocation of 12% has been made to System Restore on your C partition
which is over generous. I would reduce it to 700 mb. Right click your My
Computer icon on the Desktop and select System Restore. Place the cursor
on your C drive select Settings but this time find the slider and drag
it to the left until it reads 700 mb and exit. When you get to the
Settings screen click on Apply and OK and exit. This will give an
ongoing 260 mb saving, whereas Disk CleanUp needs to be run regularly to
save space.

Another point to note with System Restore is that it should only be set
to monitor your C (Windows) partition.

Given that your C drive is formatted as NTFS you may have another
potential saving. In the Windows Directory of your C partition you will
have some uninstall folders in your Windows folder typically:
$NtServicePackUninstall$ and $NtUninstallKB282010$ etc. These files may
be compressed or not compressed. If compressed the text of the folder
name appears in blue characters. If not compressed you can compress
them. Right click on each folder and select Properties, General,
Advanced and check the box before Compress contents to save Disk Space.
On the General Tab you can see the amount gained by deducting the size
on disk from the size. Folder compression is only an option on a NTFS
formatted drive / partition.

Open Disk Defragmenter and click on Analyse. Select View Report and
click on Save As and Save. Now find VolumeC.txt in your My Documents
Folder and post a copy. Do this before running Disk Defragmenter as it
is more informative.

You should be able to gather more information from Task Manager. With
the Processes tab open select View, Select, Columns and check the boxes
before Peak Memory Usage and Virtual Memory size. What are the figures
for the 4 processes using the largest amounts?

Your earlier Commit Charge figures could be quite misleading given your
hobby. Graphics programmes, especially when used in conjuction with undo
features (photo editing) will create significantly larger demands for
memory. Clearly if this arises it is reflected in the earlier figures.

What are your anti-virus and anti-spyware arrangements. An automatic
anti-virus scan occuring when you boot will affect performance. You may
be able to retime this to occur when you do not want to use the
computer.

41 processes running is quite reasonable. Of course some processes will
be more demanding than others.

Have you tried this approach?
How to configure Windows XP to start in a "clean boot" state
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/310353/en-us

Also look for Error Reports in the System log in Event Viewer.
Please post copies of all Error and Warning Reports appearing in
the System and Application logs in Event Viewer for the last boot. No
Information Reports or Duplicates please. Indicate which also appear in
a previous boot.

You can access Event Viewer by selecting Start, Control Panel,
Administrative Tools, and Event Viewer. When researching the meaning
of the error, information regarding Event ID, Source and Description
are important.

A tip for posting copies of Error Reports! Run Event Viewer and double
click on the error you want to copy. In the window, which appears is a
button resembling two pages. Click the button and close Event
Viewer.Now start your message (email) and do a paste into the body of
the message. Make sure this is the first paste after exiting from
Event Viewer.

Are there any yellow question marks in Device Manager? Right click on
the My Computer icon on your Desktop and select Properties,
Hardware,Device Manager. If yes what is the Device Error code?

--



Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Don Williams wrote:
I tried to send some screen images of the search results but they were
rejected as being too large.
====================================
"Don Williams" <dwilli10@xxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:OvbH2hMRIHA.5524@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

"Gerry" <gerry@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:uR48yDIRIHA.2208@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Don

Don

I am not sure you will win much on log files. However, name the
largest and let's see what they are?

I'll have to find a way to get a list of them an post them. There
are a couple hundred of them and they generally fall into two
classes. The are all relatively small.

There are about 960 files with "log" in their name. Some are .txt
files, others have different extensions. Some have Q as part of
their name, others start with KB and there are others with various
name patterns. They range in size from 1 KB to 9 KB, except for Dr.
Watson, which
tops out at 20,000 KB.

I used to know how to capture a screen picture using Print Screen and
Paint but it isn't working for me at the moment. I'll try to
remember that process and post the file names later. I do Unix, not
Windows, so I have to recall some of those things from the past.


When you say drives I think you mean partitions, The difference
does have practical implications.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partition_%28computing%29

I have physical 4 EIDE drives, 2 SCSI Drives, one SATA drive, and
two SCSI CD drives. All the drives except for the first one are
very large (300-400 GB) [because they became very cheap-I store
photos and technical documents on them for the most part] and I have
set up a generous fixed swap space on the third drive, which shows
up as drive E in my system. The first drive, the "antique", is just
40 GB and only 8 GB is
available for drive C: because of the 1024 virtual cylinder limit
for SCO Unix Boot. The second partition on that drive is devoted to
Unix boot and the necessary Unix startup files and is 15 GB. The
third partition on that drive is 8 GB and reports in as drive G:.

The 2 SCSI drives (2 and 9 GB) are devoted to Unix with two Unix
partitions on each of those drives. Unix and Windows XP Pro share
the CD drives, depending on which operating system is running.


How many drives do you have and how are they partitioned? How large
is each partition and how much free disk space on each? Are you
short on free disk space overall or is it just on the C (system?)
partition? Could you add an extra internal drive or an external
drive? Is partitition C formatted as NTFS or FAT32?

All Windows drives/partitions are NTFS and were formatted by Windows
XP Pro.


What utility was used to create the partitions? Do you have a third
party disk partitioning tool , which might be used to resize
partitions without destroying the contents of the partition?

Here are some suggestions to help create more space on partition C

It is likely that an allocation of 12% has been made to System
Restore on your C partition which is over generous. I would reduce
it to 700 mb. Right click your My Computer icon on the Desktop and
select System Restore. Place the cursor on your C drive select
Settings but this time find the slider and drag it to the left
until it reads 700 mb and exit. When you get to the Settings screen
click on Apply and OK and exit. Select Start, All Programs,
Accessories, System Tools, Disk CleanUp
to Empty your Recycle Bin and Remove Temporary Internet Files. Also
select Start, All Programs, accessories, System Tools, Disk CleanUp,
More Options, System Restore and remove all but the latest System
Restore point. Run Disk Defragmenter.

I've ran disk cleanup many times and removed all but the most recent
restore point many times. I generally can get about 1.2 GB free
space on the C partition, but defrag then reports about 100-200
files with as many as 500 fragments.


A default setting which could be wasteful is that for temporary
internet files especially if you do not store offline copies on
disk. The default allocation is 3% of drive. Depending on your
attitude to offline copies you could reduce this to 1% or 2%. In
Internet Explorer select Tools, Internet Options, General,
Temporary Internet Files, Settings to make the change. At the same
time look at the number of days history is held.

The default allocation for the Recycle Bin is 10 % of drive. Change
to 5%, which should be sufficient. In Windows Explorer place the
cursor on your Recycle Bin, right click and select Properties,
Global and
move the slider from 10% to 5%. However, try to avoid letting it get
too full as if it is full and you delete a file by mistake it will
bypass the Recycle Bin and be gone for ever.

You can also increase free disk space on your C partition can be
achieved by relocation of folders.

For Temporary Internet Files select Start, Control Panel, Internet
Options, Temporary Internet Files. Settings, Move Folder.

To move the Outlook Express Store Folder select in Outlook Express
Tools, Options, Maintenance, Store Folder, Change.
http://www.tomsterdam.com/insideoe/files/store.htm

I don't use Outlook Express for anything other than News Reading. I
use Eudora for email.


My Documents is one of a number of system created Special Folders
including My Pictures and My Music. These can more easily be
relocated using Tweak Ui. Download TweakUI, one of the MS
powertoys, from here:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/downloads/powertoys.asp

My Documents is about as empty as possible and most of it resides on
drive D:

In TweakUi select My Computer, Special Folders. You can scroll down
to see the full list of Special Folders to the left of the Change
Location button.

I have Office and all other programs I could control durin
installation running on the other, larger drives, but all of them
have some pieces on drive C: regardless of where I put the bulk of
the programs.

You may also need to change Default File locations in the Microsoft
Office programmes you choose to move the My Documents folder. For
Word go to Tools, Options, File Locations, highlight Documents,
click on Modify and change file path. For Excel go to Tools,
Options, General and change default file path.

Disk Defragmenter requires 15% free disk space (more is better if
very large files are involved) so the changes suggested above
should allow it to work more effectively. Open Disk Defragmenter
and click on Analyse. Select View Report and click on Save As and
Save. Now find VolumeC.txt in your My Documents
Folder and post a copy. Do this before running Disk Defragmenter as
it is more informative.

Your slow boot may be the result of something other than fragmented
files. How much RAM memory?

2 Gb


Try Ctrl+Alt+Delete to select Task Manager and click the Performance
Tab. Under Commit Charge what is the Total, the Limit and the Peak?

You should be able to gather more information from Task Manager.
With the Processes tab open select View, Select, Columns and check
the boxes before Peak Memory Usage and Virtual Memory size. What
are the figures for the 6 processes using the largest amounts?


Processes 41, CPU Usage 2%, Commit Charge 409M / 4928M

This is with Outlook Express running and about 3 IE 7 windows open.

Do you leave your computer on 24/7?

No

--



Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Don Williams wrote:
I run Win XP Pro and SCO Open Server on the same computer. (Need OS
for consulting projects). OSR has to be installed after Windows is
installed and has to have it's primary section within the first
1024 virtual cylinders.

As a result my C: drive is limited to 8 Gb. which was once fine but
as I have gradually upgraded from DOS to XP it's not large enough.

I noticed that drive C: it never defrags well and has many files
with hundreds of pieces, thus the slow boot.

Many of these files are log files of one kind or another and they
seem to be related to installations, error reports, etc. Can I
remove them, and if so, how can I find out which ones might
actually be required.
I have 6 additional drives on this system, some for Windows, some
for Unix, and the first drive is shared. I make it a practice to
install programs on drives other than C: but some have no option
on where they are installed.
What can I delete from drive C: and still have a stable system?

Thanks,

DAW


.