Unstable booting on home XP

[Owen]

Hello. I read your article on "make ur computer a super computer", and
have implemented
several of your suggestions.

I have a very variable and unstable bootup.
is there any way of modifying the bootup to make it do the same thing
each time?
I have cleared some excess startup programs,
using "Autoruns" from microsoft.
I have also disabled a few services.
Which ones are not necessary for home dialup use?

I have cleared prefetch, which had about 100 entries.
I have turned off indexing.
I have checked prefetch setting, which looks OK at 0x00000003 (3)
Do you have another article on the syntax of these numbers?

I don't have "Bootvis" yet. Are there any other handy editors?
Where is the boot errors log?
Do you have an article of possible boot errors and other boot tweaks?
There are no screen error messages.
The machine can run slow for 5 minutes or more after bootup, and there
can be excessive activity
with svchost.exe for a long time, but only on some bootups.

I am trying Google Chrome as a browser, as I seemed to get a lot of
crashes with
IE 8, as well as a suspicious memory "leak".
I have a list of download patches for IE 8, and will try some,
especially the "url link
from Outlook; error" one.

I have current automatic updates, as far as I know.
Is it possible that I have missed some? Where can I log on to
Microsoft to get the
updates checked? Is this necessary?

The browser seems to behave better if I start Outlook Express first.

There is also sometimes data loss and "ghost" files when doing desktop
operations, like
CD ripping+drag-and-drop+temp folder deletes.
Please point me to any further articles on these subjects, thanks.
--
Owen Nieuwenhuyse

[Owen Nieuwenhuyse]

Owen wrote:
> Hello. I read your list's article on "make ur computer a super computer",
> and
> have implemented
> several of the suggestions.
>
[snip]
I seem to have excessive page file use. While writing this email, it seems
to have settled down
to 161 megs available, which is OK. It was down to about 12 megs before,
and running like a dog.
I have 228 megs total.

How do I restrict automatic updates so that they only run at the end of a
session?
I tried setting a few of the suggested services to manual, but I suspect
that they were not
a compatable selection.
If I send a list of my services settings, can someone make suggestions on
alterations?

Is there a problem getting on to Microsoft/downloads ? It seemed to be
jammed up last night.
Is there a mirror site?
Some of the other microsoft.com pages work alright when I go into them from
Google.

I had a look at Bootvis, but that is a bit too advanced for me.
Anyhow, I think my problem is with software versions, bad or corrupted
patches, and configuration,
not with slow bootup as such.

--
Owen Nieuwenhuyse

[Owen Nieuwenhuyse]

Owen Nieuwenhuyse wrote:
> Owen wrote:
>> Hello. I read your list's article on "make ur computer a super
>> computer", and
>> have implemented
>> several of the suggestions.
>>
> [snip]
> I seem to have excessive page file use. While writing this email, it
> seems to have settled down
> to 161 megs available, which is OK. It was down to about 12 megs
> before, and running like a dog.
> I have 228 megs total.
>
> How do I restrict automatic updates so that they only run at the end
> of a session?

[snip]
I have a new theory on services and excessive paging: if services set to
"manual" are still started
during a typical session, then they should be put to "automatic".
This ensures that they will go to low memory-important if they are called a
lot.
I am giving it a try-out and will let you know.
--
Owen Nieuwenhuyse