Sudden slow boot

Hi,

I bought my Acer almost 12 months ago. I'm running XP.

For the first couple of months it was fine, but quite suddenly it began overnight to crawl through the boot process.When it came to playing the Windows introductory theme through the speakers the sound was distorted: it played slowly. When the system eventually booted everything was very slow to use. I assumed that I must have installed something that had caused a problem and tried uninstalling things, but nothing helped. It became such a pain that I stopped using the Acer.

Less than a week ago it occurred to me to try to restore the Acer to its original condition via Acer eRecovery. All went fine, and it became fast and sleek again. Last night I left it on Standby, but this morning when I started it up it had resumed the crawling into boot business, along with the fractured playing of the start theme.

I looked in System Restore and found that this morning a Restore Point was created after something was installed via Software Distribution Service 3. I Googled that and found that other people have had boot problems as a result of using Windows Automatic Update, but I wasn't able to find a solution.

I've just used System Restore to return to yesterday morning's system, but it didn't help. When the PC rebooted it was slow and playback of the sound file was distorted again.

Can anyone please help me with this? I have auto updates for Windows on my desktop but this problem hasn't happened there. It may not be an auto updates problem, of course, but to me (a non-techy) it's looking that way. Please help if you can, because my Acer is virtually unusable like this.

 

I have the same problem. Can't say I've tracked it down to the Windows update, but since the issue arises in the same time frame as the update (the last few days in my case), I think Shirl is on the right track.

Any help would be much appreciated.

edit. The performance monitor shows huge spikes in cpu use every time a new file or process is started. Sufficient to make sound files stutter when it's happening. Everything stabilises shortly afterwards. This includes opening and closing windows. It isn't my anti virus app, which I temporarily disabled to check what was happening. I have removed from startup the things that were obviously unneeded, which leaves HKLM registry stuff. I'm guessing one of those is a Windows system file as part of the the update, perhaps a malicious virus removal component, that is the problem. I'm also guessing it is supposed to run once, not every time a file is opened.

If this is so, can someone tell me how to disable this?

 

OK, I fixed the problem I had. Solution is here. http://www.softwaretipsandtricks.com/fo ... ering.html

To summarise (and I'm quoting from that source)

the cause...
After the Windows IDE/ATAPI Port driver (Atapi.sys) receives a cumulative total of six time-out or cyclical redundancy check (CRC) errors, the driver reduces the communications speed (the transfer mode) from the highest Direct Memory Access (DMA) mode to lower DMA modes in steps. If the driver continues to receive time-out or CRC errors, the driver eventually reduces the transfer mode to the slowest mode (PIO mode).

( to sumerise, the drive data transfer rate has been decreased! so evrytime it needs to load data quickly, e.g. logging in, or starting an app, it stutters I/O devices, including mouse and sound! )

is this right for you?
1. go to device manager --- (right click mycomputer, and click properties, hardware, devicemanager)
2. expand the IDE ATA/ATAPI CONTROLLERS
3. doubleclick the controller for ur HDD, will be PRIMARY IDE CHANNEL for most poeple.

in the advanced settings tab, if the CURRENT TRANSFER MODE is "PIO Mode", than THIS IS DEFFINATELY THE PROBLEM!

as there are different modes of DMA, this may still be your problem, so trying this fix is worth a try.


THE FIX!!!
in the driver tab of the same window, click uninstall, and uninstall the driver. then restart your computer. upon restarting, windows will reinstall the driver, and reset the count, therefore giving you a high DMA mode! which will be perfect!

 

Jacinto is correct, that will solve your problem. You can view more discussion on this problem and solution here
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=13128

 

I have an 8.9 inch acer aspire that had bad sound quality and dog slow boot up. This fixed BOTH. You guys rule! Thanks

 

Brilliant, ingenious!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Thanks so much!