Windows 7: Windows is taking longer and longer to Boot?

ok so my laptop's a few years old. It came with Windows 7 Home Basic. it still has it.

My question is that it take A LOT of time to boot. Heres what happens:

1. The starting windows doesn't take that long to disappear, im satisfied with it.
2. But the welcome screen, ugh, First it just displays the Welcome screen background without the 'welcome' text, only the loading circle. Then after a little while the 'welcome; text appears, this par takes a lot of time.

Then the desktop finally appears, but wait theres more!!!

The icons on the desktop appear as white pages (files) then one by one their respective images appear. Sometimes even after the desktop appears it wakes about 5-6 seconds for the login sound to be played.

I have a Intel core i3-2330M processor 2.20ghzz
With 4gigs of ram and 500Gb of harddisk space, which is filled more than 50 percent (about 210 gbs are available).

I've tried to defragment my harddisk, Use CCleaner, used MsConfig to disable a lot of startup rpograms and services and remove a few programs. I would like you to suggest some other software for 'cleaning' or 'optimizing' my harddisk, as i think that its filled way too much and that may be the cause.


OFF TOPIC: is it possible to remove everything from my harddisk 'except' Windows? Because i don't want to format my harddisk and then reinstall Windows.

Any tips and tricks are also welcomed.

For a test, disable ALL startup programs in msconfig.

Are you sure it won't do any harm?
You want me to disable Windows operating system?
audio driver?
touchpad ?

Under the *startup* tab, untick all the programs there and reboot. Then turn on each and reboot and see which causes the problem.

You don't understand, i only have a bunch of programs selected.

If i disable 'microsoft windows operating system' (number 3 on the list) will it do any harm? will windows start?

You can disable that - read more about it here.
What is ctfmon.exe And Why Is It Running?

The only thing I would leave for Auto start is your AV program (AVG).
Try starting with only AVG set for auto start up.

You have an Unknown in there as item #6.
I'd look into that...

Disabling the startups does not mean that the program will go away in any fashion ot form. In lieu of running all the time it will be called when needed. There is absolutely no damage you can do.

I always disable all the startups with 2 exceptions:

1. The AV program
2. Programs that I started myself - e.g. the Rocket Dock or the gadgets (sidebar).

But for a test you can even temporarily disable those and see what that yields.

Btw: there is also a delayed start where you can start a program a few minutes after boot. That option has the advantage that you really do not get a noticable performance impact. Delayed start is best managed with WinPatrol - the free version.

http://www.winpatrol.com/