thurstongarden;370418 Wrote: > Thanks for the input chaps and chapesses. Unsure of how to do multiple > quotes, I will add my replies: > > 1. I might well be able to put in a second drive, but it's a works > laptop so I don't really want to. > > 2. No, I won't be stopping at 65Gb. That's me just re-ripped all my > CD's having previously had them as mp3. The library will of course get > bigger, but it won't be quick. I am tempted to look at getting a fit-pc > next year and having it as a dedicated music server/storage. That way I > can get all my FLAC off my works laptop. I can also go wired rather > than wireless as at the moment. > > 3. I agree that there's something bad about my system. It's a very > small firm with a retained IT bod but he's not much good. I prefer to > keep my own machine clean, but I also fiddle... Time for a full > reinstall! > > 4. MSCONFIG - yes I am familiar and have hoovered it out as best as I > dare. I attach a screenshot of those that I have not had the courage to > uncheck and would be grateful for any more I can get rid of. > > 5. I do have a 500Gb external drive for back ups and will be backing up > all my music, photos and docs before the reinstall. > > 6. I have ZoneAlarm running (this actually seems to take quite a while > to lad though), use AVG CCleaner and Spyware Doctor regularly and its > apparently all clean. Any ideas on a light firewall? Or should I revert > to Micro$not's own? > > 7. Power Button - tried that although firstime, it being a laptop, of > course it fired up lol. Battery out on the second attempt but to no > avail. It did remind me of my Apple days (10 years ago) when you could > 'zap the P-ram' this power thing sounds quite similar. Didny work > though sadly. > > I never considered that the FLAC files were dragging the startup time > down - but tried a defrag last week and I gave up after 14 hours and > 23%! This is what brought me to the idea of creating a partition. Looks > like it's a winner when I do the back up and reinstall. > > Cheers again for the help - looking forward to more! > > TG
Looks as if you have a lot of non-essential stuuf in your start up. Also it appears as if you have two instances of SC starting up.. Can't really tell because I can't see the paths. In task manager, how many processes do you have running. On a laptop if it's much over 40-45 you may want to eliminate some of the. Only you know what needs to be running and better yet what needs to be in startup. My music server has 32 processes running including SC and Squeeze tray. In my start up folder I have SqueezeTray only. MSCONFIG shows 8 startup programs. You can't get much cleaner than that with Windows, but you can get much closer. Clear your caches and temp files (Internet and others). Run a defrag and clean up your statup files. Make certain you have 1 firewall only. Mulitple firewalls are an invitation for disaster. Get rid of all but one virus, maleware, etc. program that is running. Most of the time after taking these steps things improve drastically especially start up times. You may also want to run a good maleware scan. My favorite is Malewarebytes. It's free and does a great job. Better than TrendMicro and others. Good luck Howard -- Howard Passman .....and still waiting for extra cradles.. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Howard Passman's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=16674 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=56381 _______________________________________________ discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
