Windows seems to load okay but any program take 30 minutes to load

Hi guys, hope you can help.

I have an old laptop running on Windows 7 Home. A few days ago, it started acting up.

It seems to load quickly as the icons come up fast. But when I double click a program, be it win explorer, chrome or even just to change the date/time on calendar for example, it takes 30 minutes before the program shows up.

All throughout this time the hard drive is fully lit.

But, after the first 30 to 45 minutes upon loading, it functions okay. Everything loads and runs as they should, no lag time.

I just noticed it a few days ago, before that it seemed to have loaded okay.

I don't know if this has anything to do with it, but the past few days I've had to manipulate a lot of video files, ie. download them from servers, edit then compress them.

Not sure if this has affected windows loading. It's a hassle since I start to work in the morning and need to wait half an hour before even seeing some semblance of being able to use it.

CPU % and RAM usage don't seem to be a lot, but I'm attaching the start up stuff just in case you may find something there: (I zipped it because there are a few screenshots for the services )

• startup programs (I took out as much as I could a year or so back so it loads quickly.)
• startup processes
• startup services (was surprised to see so many services on the list, is the culprit here?)

Thanks a lot in advance. Hope someone can help fix it.

This sounds strangely similar to the problem I have!

My PC comes to life after about 13-15 mins though.

Programs not even launching - folders and other files such as pics are

Ranger4 said:

How full is the Hard Drive?. A hard drive that is over 85-90% full will slow down a lot. Windows needs at least 10% free space to work properly. You mentioned that you have downloaded a lot of video files lately so that certainly points to a full hard drive.

- Use Disk Cleanup (%windir%\system32\cleanmgr.exe), select all and run.
- Download CCleaner Thanks for downloading CCleaner Run disk cleaner.

Thanks for the tips guys.

I finally got it fixed. It was the Avast anti-virus, not sure what happened. I think it updated and something went haywire.

I did use up a lot of space while fixing the videos and Ranger4's tip on clearing up space did cut down the speed. After that, I did do the disk clean up Megahertz07 but surprisingly only saw very little amount of space used up by the temp folders. Maybe I did something wrong.

In the end, I painstakingly took off one program at a time and kept reloading the machine after each removal.

Interestingly, when I downloaded a new copy of Avast and reinstalled in it worked without a hitch. So we're back to about 2:20-2:30 load time from turning on the machine which is fine by me.

Thanks for all the help!

Good you found the solution.

Please mark this thread as solved.