Slow Windows 7 Home Premium x64 Startup (>5 minutes)

Hello, first time joining and posting so I'll go straight to the point.

Hardware specifications:
Computer type: Laptop
Brand: HP (Hewlett-Packard)
OS: Windows® 7 Home Premium (64-bit) [Authentic]
CPU: Intel® Core™ i5-3210M @ 2.5GHz
RAM: 8GB of RAM DDR3
Graphics: Intel® HD Graphics 4000
Sound: IDT High Definition Audio
Hard Disk: 700GB hard disk drive

My computer is slow at startup and it's about time that I fix this, been happening for over a year and tried fixing it on my own but to no avail, after I login it shows me a blank screen (either black or blue, depends on the solid background colour I chose) and then I have to wait like >5 minutes or so (I can open some applications at this point like Task Manager, etc but larger programs would be very slow and might stuck up to Not Responding) and the taskbar appears first then the desktop and icons and at that point there is still some lag and it would take about a minute or two to actually finish loading although most programs work at this point and finally I can continue gaming or something.

My drivers are up to date since well HP doesn't provide any more future updates for my hardware, Windows Update is running fine and I'm getting updates all the time, my antivirus Microsoft Security Essentials ran a full scan a few times and has detected nothing although I have noticed after login that the Memory usage on Task Manager is on 1.60 GB and really slowly rises up to >2.15 GB and that's where the it finishes loading.

And no, I can't update to Windows 8 nor do a reformat since there is a ton of data and upgrading would break it or render it useless and this laptop has shared ownership, also I shouldn't perform anything that would change a lot of things on the laptop or uninstall any programs unless COMPLETELY NECESSARY.

Any help is appreciated, big thanks.

Hi and welcome to SevenForums,
Use Clean boot,
Troubleshoot Application Conflicts by Performing a Clean Startup
Click Start and type in the search box,
msconfig
Click on the suggestion on top or hit the Enter key,
Go to the Startup section and take some screen shots for a complete list,
Go to the Services section and on the bottom left Check the box to Hide All Microsoft services,
Repeat the screen shots,
See the links above my signature on how to take and upload screen shots here,

Also lets see the disk management screen shot if you'd be so kind
Disk Management - Post a Screen Capture Image

So I did a clean boot and wow it loaded way faster, although after login there was a bit of lag (the same one after logging in before the clean boot) but it lasted less than a minute or so.

Here is a complete set of screenshots of my msconfig configuration (I disabled some services in hope that it would speed up the booting process but I had to re-enable some of them to get some Microsoft programs working again like Disk Management)
Imgur: The most awesome images on the Internet

And here is a screenshot of my Disk Management
Imgur: The most awesome images on the Internet

Hi,
That's quite a list
Your hard drive is almost full,

I'd run some scanners because some of those goodies usually come with hidden extras
Review Jacee’s instructions to run Adwcleaner here post #7,
Ignore the title of the thread,
Instant Savings App
On the BleepingComputer site use the button that looks like this,

You can use these free tools to see if they find anything,
Manually Update them before running full scans,
Try not to use your computer while the scans are running, (one at a time of course).
See this tutorial on how to download and run Malwarebytes,
Malwarebytes Anti-Malware Free
Also use the Custom scan option not the Threat scan,

Malwarebytes | Malwarebytes Anti-Malware Premium
SAS is safe to remove anything it finds
SUPERAntiSpyware | Remove Malware | Remove Spyware - AntiMalware, AntiSpyware, AntiAdware!

Hey,

Well you're right on that one, I can't really delete anything else on the laptop that's not mine or from my account since this is shared with 3 major users and we use like over 100 GB for each account

But I ran AdwCleaner and it found a few nasties and I prompted it to delete their ugly faces and voila, next restart they were gone. Log file is attached onto reply.

Next is I'll try out a scan with Malwarebytes to see if it finds anything else although it'll conflict with Microsoft Security Essentials but I'll remove Malwarebytes after because I can't really purchase it.

I'll reply as soon as the scan finishes. :)

That is a nasty
https://malwaretips.com/blogs/bitlord-toolbar-removal/

I would switch to Panda free personally and get rid of MSE asap
FREE and lightweight antivirus - Panda Security

Malwarebytes does not conflict with Panda I have mbam pro/ premium and no issues so keep it around

You should also scan all the other user accounts.

Hi Rattle189!

Try downloading this: Quick Startup - Free Startup Manager to Speed up Windows Boot | Glarysoft

Im actually having the same problem before and even worse, it took me 45 minutes to start up and that was very bad. So i tried that software called Quick Startup to manage and control the startup items that loads during startup that will lessen your boot time. Now i can boot for just 42 seconds! and its still being faster and faster until it becomes so fast!




-Bene4Lyf :)

ThrashZone said:

That is a nasty
https://malwaretips.com/blogs/bitlord-toolbar-removal/

I would switch to Panda free personally and get rid of MSE asap
FREE and lightweight antivirus - Panda Security

Malwarebytes does not conflict with Panda I have mbam pro/ premium and no issues so keep it around

You should also scan all the other user accounts.

Yeah, already taken care of although I'm not suppose to replace AV software on this laptop, but thanks for recommending I'll try it out on my new laptop soon.

jc836 said:

In addition to what the others have suggested - I would seriously consider an external drive for each user's data (as a backup at least). MalwareBytes FREE version resides on all of my machines and is set to NOT load on Startup. It is an excellent resource to keep.
If you can - it might be worthwhile to consider an SSD to replace the 750HDD. Using one for your program and OS files would be a way to speed things up.

Don't think I can get an external drive or an SSD replacement for now but I'll purchase one for myself in the future.

Bene4Lyf said:

Hi Rattle189!

Try downloading this: Quick Startup - Free Startup Manager to Speed up Windows Boot | Glarysoft

Im actually having the same problem before and even worse, it took me 45 minutes to start up and that was very bad. So i tried that software called Quick Startup to manage and control the startup items that loads during startup that will lessen your boot time. Now i can boot for just 42 seconds! and its still being faster and faster until it becomes so fast!




-Bene4Lyf :)

Will check it out and try out the software you recommended, has positive reviews and is declared safe by most, thanks.


Sorry for the late reply, I had gotten busy on other things but thanks all for your help I think the problem is solved already since the startup time is faster and I don't think I'll have to perform any maintenance on this laptop anymore since I'm getting a new one myself in the upcoming future.

Once again, THANKS FOR ALL YOUR HELP GUYS I APPRECIATE IT!