New
#31
According to this, the delay is actually not entirely winlogon (the logon screen), it's starting Explorer itself that takes the most time. Here's what I see - note I will be nitpicking anything that takes what I consider to be, anyway, a long time to start or run, or consumes a lot of disk or CPU time, etc:
Here are my suggestions to you, in order of importance:
- FontCache3.0.0.0 service is taking 3 seconds to start - you should boot into Safe Mode and delete the fontcache3.0.0.0.dat file, which will cause it to be recreated and (hopefully) not take more than a second or two to parse after that first creation.
- StacSV service takes 3 seconds to start - it looks like you have Sigmatel Audio, so removal of the sigmatel suite (software *and* drivers) and installing the very latest from your vendor should improve this start time.
- McAfee services take (cumulatively) approximately 11 seconds to start, and once they finish (and I do believe this is exactly where you are seeing delays, given your initial description) the McAfee driver and process kick off a tremendous amount of disk utilization on it's .dat file and quick scan.
- This wouldn't necessarily be all that bad, but it appears to also be exacerbated by the fact you have the ATI control center (CCC.exe) running, which is also trying to utilize disk and CPU resources at the exact same time (it's a .NET application, and you can see all kinds of loading of processes and .dlls responsible for loading with this application consuming disk and CPU time at the same time as well).
- Also, once the McAfee core firewall and service host processes start (mfefire.exe and McSvHost.exe), CPU time is fairly monopolized by the McAfee processes, slowing the overall progress of the system down.
These are all consuming disk, CPU, and network time during boot that could otherwise be used by the system to actually, you know, boot .
- Remove McAfee completely, and use something much lighter in it's place. Lots of folks here will recommend Microsoft Security Essentials paired with the built-in firewall, and I tend to agree. There are others as well, but this one is proven (and plays nicely with other tools like MBAM if necessary).
- If you do not need the ATI control panel's functionality, remove your current ATI driver + Control Panel combination and install just the latest ATI drivers (without the control panel or other frills) in their place. The ATI control panel is a well-known CPU and disk hog, not to mention it's not the most stable application out there either.
- If you do not need or do not use the Alienware tools that shipped with the machine (like StartupOrchestrator, ServiceController, etc), remove them.
- If you don't sync your Apple i-device regularly, remove all of the "helper" applications required to use iTunes (Bojour service, apple updater, etc).
- RealPlayer is installed, running, and checking for updates. If you aren't using RealPlayer, remove.
- The same goes for Roxio's media burning software and the Cyberlink software - if you aren't using them, remove them.