on start up ??

[mutantpoodle]

my laptop is getting slower and slower at start up

I have read in various places that an investigation into what is 'happening' at start up is possible and that maybe some things can be stopped/removed

but how...and where do i go to discover what these things are
AND how will I know what most of the things are!...they are bound to have all sorts of odd titles which will be meaningless to me!

any advice....and assistance in words of few syllables wold be appreciated

TIA

[Alaric]

but how...and where do i go to discover what these things are

You run the program* msconfig which gives you tick boxes of what starts when you boot up the computer. You change to "selective start up" and check what starts. Stuff you install on the computer will sometimes set itself up to start automatically even if you have no common need for that to happen. You just untick it. It's probably best to leave alone anything that describes itself as Microsoft.

*There are various ways of running a program. One is to hit the "Windows" key (between FN and ALT bottom left) and R. Another is to use the start button. But that's a generic part of any maintenance and not part of this specific problem.

An additional approach is to check whether you have more programs installed than you really need. You use "Control Panel" to get at those to remove.

[mc2fool]

but how...and where do i go to discover what these things are

Hold down ctrl and alt and press delete and select Task Manager and then click on the Start-up tab.

That'll show you what programs run at startup and their impact, and you can select one and use the Disable button at the bottom right to disable it. You can also right-click on one which gives you additional options, including searching for the item online, which will help you figure out what it is.

And then there's system services, but why don't you start with the above first ...

[Redmires]

Use Autoruns, which is the most comprehensive startup manager I know of. It's part of the excellent Microsoft Sysinternals package and has lots of help & info on the website.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/

[Alaric]

Hold down ctrl and alt and press delete and select Task Manager and then click on the Start-up tab.

The OP didn't tell us which version of Windows he was running. Using Task Manager to get at the start up list is an easier option than running msconfig, but isn't there as an option in Windows 7.

[mutantpoodle]

many thanks
I have had a look and have 48 'background processes' running

I recognise AVAST...MAlawarebytes...Java...and there are many microsoft things
but mostly i dont recognise others

AMD external events client...????
AMD fuel service ????//

for instance??

[ReformedCharacter]

my laptop is getting slower and slower at start up

I have read in various places that an investigation into what is 'happening' at start up is possible and that maybe some things can be stopped/removed

but how...and where do i go to discover what these things are
AND how will I know what most of the things are!...they are bound to have all sorts of odd titles which will be meaningless to me!

any advice....and assistance in words of few syllables wold be appreciated

TIA

Another vote for Autoruns (see above). It's worth mentioning that regular disk defragmentation (assuming you don't have a SSD) can make a huge difference to start-up speed and performance generally.

RC

[Breelander]

AMD external events client...????
AMD fuel service ????//

Some info here...

AMD External Events Service is the AMD/ATI hotkey poller...

https://www.sevenforums.com/performance ... rvice.html

What is AMD FUEL service?
...As it turned out, it's responsible for the additional Performance and Power options in Catalyst Control Center...

https://superuser.com/questions/556717/ ... el-service

As mentioned earlier, it would help to know which version of Windows you have so that the advice offered can be version-specific.

Another vote for Autoruns, but be warned - the information it provides is comprehensive. It can seem overwhelming if you are not something of a 'geek'.

[mc2fool]

I have had a look and have 48 'background processes' running

Hold on here ... You started off asking about "what is 'happening' at start up", but what you are now looking at is what is known as "services". The latter is greatly more complicated than the former and may or may not be related to your issue.

I suggest you follow the advice above (as per your version of Windows) and check out what's running at start up before you move onto background processes. After all, your issue is slow startup, not how it's running afterwards, and while some of those processes you see will have been started at startup, many will not.

[Itsallaguess]

I recognise AVAST...Malawarebytes...

Check both programs, and see if there's any scheduled scans set to automatically run.

This is almost the first thing I check when looking at slow machines, especially ones that take much longer than usual to boot-up, and quite often I find that it's the auto-starting of an anti-virus or mal-ware scan that's hogging resources.

Autoruns and Task Manager are also used extensively to investigate processor-hogging that's going on - both very helpful.

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

[BobbyD]

Copy all your data off if it is kept on your boot partition (best avoided), reinstall windows, reinstall your software, take a backup image, return data.

You can mess around looking for causes one by one, or just put your computer in a time machine back to the point when it was it's youngest, fittest, fastest self. And next time you'll be able to simply restore from the image.

[Itsallaguess]

Copy all your data off if it is kept on your boot partition (best avoided), reinstall windows, reinstall your software, take a backup image, return data.

You can mess around looking for causes one by one, or just put your computer in a time machine back to the point when it was it's youngest, fittest, fastest self. And next time you'll be able to simply restore from the image.

That's all well and good as a Plan-B option, but the OP doesn't seem to currently have the expertise to investigate and remedy what sounds like a relatively trivial slow-PC issue.

Surely in this case, it's best to educate people and see if a Plan-A approach might succeed, where a less onerous level of effort might result in both an increase in the general speed of the PC, and also an improved level of understanding as to how that might be achieved, so that the next time this happens, the OP could hopefully investigate and remedy themselves, as well as help others in the same situation?

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

[Alaric]

Copy all your data off if it is kept on your boot partition (best avoided), reinstall windows, reinstall your software, take a backup image, return data.

That's an extremely long route if the same can be achieved by unticking a couple of boxes.

[BobbyD]

Copy all your data off if it is kept on your boot partition (best avoided), reinstall windows, reinstall your software, take a backup image, return data.

You can mess around looking for causes one by one, or just put your computer in a time machine back to the point when it was it's youngest, fittest, fastest self. And next time you'll be able to simply restore from the image.

That's all well and good as a Plan-B option, but the OP doesn't seem to currently have the expertise to investigate and remedy what sounds like a relatively trivial slow-PC issue.

Surely in this case, it's best to educate people and see if a Plan-A approach might succeed, where a less onerous level of effort might result in both an increase in the general speed of the PC, and also an improved level of understanding as to how that might be achieved, so that the next time this happens, the OP could hopefully investigate and remedy themselves, as well as help others in the same situation?

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

That's one solution, but the one I suggest is probably already within the OP's technical abilities, and easily repeatable when the problem reoccurs. In fact it's quicker next time around because you already have an image, so takes but a few minutes to restore it again. You can spend an awful lot of time investigating speed leaks even if you know what you are doing, or you can start the reinstall process and go and make a cup of tea confident that in one simple procedure you are getting rid of all the crud that has accumulated over time... I vote for tea!

[BobbyD]

Copy all your data off if it is kept on your boot partition (best avoided), reinstall windows, reinstall your software, take a backup image, return data.

That's an extremely long route if the same can be achieved by unticking a couple of boxes.

It really doesn't take that long, and there is no if, there's no need to find the boxes, and it's more comprehensive.

[XFool]

I wonder...

Mindful of the phrase "To a man with a hammer everything looks like a nail", I couldn't help wondering if this might be related to a problem I had with my Toshiba Satellite Pro notebook running Win 8, 64 Bit. This was recently solved with the help of Breelander and was related to my using the MS 'Fast Start Up' option. (Also available in Win 10)

The symptoms were strange, initially everything OK, over time with repeated boot ups one Svchost process was running longer and longer and using more and more memory, the hard disc was going to 100% usage for long periods making the machine take longer and longer to become usable from boot up. Eventually, if not corrected, it became impossible to use programs.

There were other oddities: no sound at startup, though sounds were set to ON. The problem could always be temporarily corrected by any change to the OS; a MS update, a change to some or any setting, by restarting the machine AFTER boot up etc. But it always gradually returned.

It was finally cleared when I simply turned off the ironically named 'Fast Start Up'.

You haven't given enough detail in your OP to establish the exact nature of the problem or whether it is related to the above. I would use Task Manager following boot up to see which process is hogging resources and go from there, before you start all this "reinstall" malarky.

[Alaric]

I would use Task Manager following boot up to see which process is hogging resources and go from there, before you start all this "reinstall" malarky.

Reinstalling the operating system and programs is going to depend on having them readily available on back up media and being able to guarantee no data will be destroyed in the process. Anyone that well organised should have no problems with a bit of tinkering using Task Manager.

[BobbyD]

Reinstalling the operating system and programs is going to depend on having them readily available on back up media

It's a laptop, it probably involves working out which fkey to press during startup.

[Alaric]

It's a laptop, it probably involves working out which fkey to press during startup.

Aren't you rather making the assumption that all the backups, including the installation routines for programs have been stored on another disk partition? You can restore the operating system to an earlier restore point if backups have been specified. That might or might not cure a slow start up problem.

[BobbyD]

It's a laptop, it probably involves working out which fkey to press during startup.

Aren't you rather making the assumption that all the backups, including the installation routines for programs have been stored on another disk partition? You can restore the operating system to an earlier restore point if backups have been specified. That might or might not cure a slow start up problem.

I'm not making any assumptions I'm proposing a solution to a problem.

If the OP uses an obscure version of a no longer available programme which has since disappeared leaving no trace and whose functionality is not replicated by any other commonly available alternative then sure you might have a point. Then again such a programme would be a prime suspect for what is throwing sand in their gears. In most cases, and without a thorough forensic interrogation of the OP we must to some extent generalise, this isn't going to be the case.

A restore point would also be a possibility, not one which immediately springs to my mind since the first thing I do on installing an OS is turn off restore and take a disk image...