PC has been slower since last format

gregrocker said:

Why do you want all of these programs to start up with Windows? They become freeloaders on your RAM, CPU and Startup when they should wait to start up when you click on them.

It's always best for performance to run a Clean Boot.

If you must have these start up with Windows then add them back in msconfig>Startup, but realize you are going in the opposite direction from good performance.

But before formatting the penultimate time I had those programs to start up with Windows and I never had any problems, disabling them will make the start up faster yes but it will not fix that 'problem' that's making slow startup when the penultimate time I had the exact same programs (except from MSE) and my start up was fast

Your Startup and logs are clean so next step is to run the trace which the Pro's use to determine the cause of slow startup with certainty: Gathering a Startup, Shutdown, Sleep, Hibernate, or Reboot Trace - Windows 7 Forums

Cluberti can be PM'd to consult once you upload the trace file to a free server like MS Skydrive and link it here.

Should I do a boot , shutdown or reboot trace?

Whichever one is the problem.

Boot_Trace.rar There It is , I already sent the PM to Cluberti. I hope we can fix it

A Guy said:

Great post cluberti

A Guy

+1 It's always a pleasure to watch Carl at work. We are fortunate to have him here as he is probably the foremost expert on these issues in the world.

cluberti said:

According to the boot trace data, it only takes about 37 seconds to get from the initial kernel bootstrap to explorer.exe loaded - however, the "post-boot" phase takes almost 70 seconds (of the total boot time of 105 seconds). From what I can see during this time period, the following is happening:

1. Lpksetup.exe is running - why would the language pack installer be running, might I ask?
2. Steam.exe takes quite some time to start - I don't know if you can avoid Steam starting during logon (I don't personally have experience running Steam), but if you can avoid it starting up at logon, I would strongly recommend it.
3. The ATI CCC control panel is installed and running - unless you actually need the features that the control panel brings, uninstall that and the drivers *completely*, and reinstall just the latest driver pack only from ATI/AMD.
4. The Adobe Acrobat update service launches on startup - as with all startup items, unless you feel like you need it, use autoruns to make it stop running at logon and only run it when you need it.
5. You have installed Online Armor Firewall (xfire64.exe), and given we're troubleshooting "clean install" performance issues, this is a major sticking point for me (as would any filter driver be). Remove this until we're sure it isn't a part of the problem (and from what I see here, to go along with the other things I am aware from troubleshooting it the last few years, it very well may be).
6. Your ReadyBoot prefetch data is exhibiting higher-than-normal (at least in my experience) miss rates, which contributes to slowing disk I/O during boot.

Ultimately, Steam uses the most disk I/O during the boot/start process, and you have a *lot* of disk head movement due to disk fragmentation - couple that with other known performance-problem programs (ATI control panel, your firewall, and other startup items that happen during logon) and yes, what you are seeing is about what I'd expect, performance-wise, from your specs. My recommendation is to remove unnecessary startup items (anything and everything you don't absolutely need), remove the 3rd party firewall (Windows firewall should be sufficient, but if you really need a 3rd party firewall the one you chose would not be my first recommendation for performance reasons), clear out your prefetch data (delete all *.pf files from \Windows\Prefetch), and then run a full defrag pass on the drive. Once you've done that, reboot 5 times (yes, specifically 5 times) in order to rebuild your prefetch data, then run one more full defrag pass.

After that, see what you end up with.

Hello! First of all thanks a bunch for answering


1) I don't know with the Language Pack Installer is running, I installed the japanese language pack , is there a way to close it?

2) I never had a problem with Steam, I've set it to don't start at Startup but it's the same

3) I use the Composite Sync from the ATi Control Panel.


4) I'll try this and report back EDIT: Tried it, I think it works a little better now I disabled google updater and adobe acrobat



5) xfire64.exe is not a Firewall service but a game tracking software that allows you to chat (Xfire - Gaming Simplified) I never had problems with this one either.

6) Before formatting twice I had not this problem, and I had exactly the same programs, surely removing unnecessary items will make startup faster, but It won't fix my slow startup which I never had (and I used exactly the same programs I swear!)