Incredibly Slow xp boot + slower performance- please help!

Hi guys, I have question here for you. I have an acer aspire one which over the last few weeks hasn't given me any problems until recently.

First problems:
-Random shut-off: The laptop would randomly shut off, and then not turn back on. After some research, I managed to get it up and running. Worked fine after that.

Current problem:
-Slow boot-up, slower performance: The laptop takes up to 5-10 minutes to boot up from being off. It hangs on the windows loading screen. After that everything seems to work okay, but there's been a marked decrease in system performance.


I did have TuneUp 2007 installed with visual styles, custom boot screens and login/logoff, but I disabled those, and they don't work. Ran adaware, spybot, mcafee, and everything came up clean. Disk defrag, etc etc. Checked the hardware device list and nothing is reported to be working out of order. RAM is registered properly.

I don't do any gaming on the laptop, and haven't done any modifications. Only thing I use it for is browsing the internet, chatting and taking notes in class.

Any help would be much appreciated!

 

I'd try installing and running CCleaner which is a highly rated utility for removing redundant files and registry entries - use both the reg and file cleaners. If that doesn't fix it, you should look at the task manager (Ctl-alt-delete) to see how many processes you're running and how much they are using in resources. Sounds like you've tested for malware / bots. Never been a fan of McAfee, but it shouldn't be causing the problem you describe.

 

revert to the original xp bootscreen and see what happened.
Alternatively, you can go to safe mode and open msconfig, then enable "no GUI boot" option under boot.ini

 

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3245#p21581

 

It sounds strange that your problems have occurred just out of the blue. Might be you have installed some updates .... You could try to create a restore point (just to be sure where you are) and go back to the restore point when it was working to check a difference (if any).
It is also worth to read this
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3245&start=10