Speeding start up of Laptop

Recently my laptop has been very slow starting up.
Black screen for a good minute before the log in screen even loads up, then when I've put my password in etc even the icons on my desktop take ages to load up.

Do any of you guys know ways to increase speed of my laptop?
It can't be low memory because I have a good 250GB of space left.
I've done the basic disk defragment/clean up, cleared cookies/cache and what not but it's still slow.
Anything I can do?

 

Plenty of things you can do, although the best, quickest way is to format your computer and just reinstall Windows.

If you don't want to do that -

Start > Search: msconfig - Services tab, tick the 'hide all Microsoft services', Then just go through and untick whatever you don't want to start up when you start your PC up. So for example if you had Malwarebytes set to start up automatically and you untick it, it won't start on startup so you'd have to do in manually.

Then do the same on the next tab 'startup' and untick whatever you don't starting up with your PC.

After that close it (ignore the restart message).

Start > Search 'disk cleanup'. Let that run and then you can tick whatever you want to be deleted from your PC. If you go in the next tab you can set it to delete all but the most recent system restore point, although only do this if you're sure you won't need to restore it anytime soon.

Start > Search: Add or Remove Programs. Go through the list and uninstall whatever programs you don't want on there. The more you can remove the better.

Start > Search: Windows Update. Check for updates and install the important ones and some of the optional ones, these don't necessarily speed your PC up but they reduce errors and crashing that occur on it.

You can consider this - http://www.majorgeeks.com/Advanced_SystemCare_Free_6.2.0.254_d5927.html

Description of program (but use the above link to download it, it has an updated version - http://download.cnet.com/Advanced-SystemCare/3000-2086_4-10407614.html

This program is basically an enhanced version of disk clean up, except it cleans out and gets rid of a hell of a lot more junk that the Windows one does. If you choose to install it then be sure not to install any of the freeware crap they try to sneak in with it. There's a free version and a pro version, if you want the pro version then I can give you a staff to use (which I am allowed to possess and give out) you'll have to PM me for it though. Be sure to go through the options on it so you know what will be deleted and such.

Finally - http://download.cnet.com/Smart-Defrag-2/3000-2094_4-10759533.html

This is an enhanced version of Windows Defrag, it does what it does a lot better than the Windows one. You can choose it to move your most frequently used files to the fastest areas of your hard drive. So for example if you play COD4 a lot (just an example) then it would move COD4 to the fastest area of your HDD so it loads faster and can be accessed faster on your PC.

Try thouse ^_^

 

I don't actually have the disk to reinstall windows. If I reformat the laptop is there another way to remove everything but keep windows?

 

You could 'acquire' it off the Internet, though that is illegal.

Or you could legally download the .ISO, burn it to a disc, then use that to reformat and then just use the key on your current Windows OS.

Another option is setting up some Windows partitions, you could just install it to another section on your hard drive and then just transfer over what you need on the other part.

 

Dam... I have an external hard drive but all my USB ports are broken.
I may "acquire" it online, but how do I get my current OS key?

 

Use an CD or something, it may work as replacement to the extarnal hard drive. What do you mean with broken btw? Are they really broken or is your Windows weird? Dropbox is also an alternative, depends on how much you have.

 

Flip your laptop upside down, do you see a Microsoft sticker that has a product key on it? I'm assuming you bought the laptop with Windows pre-installed. There are ways to find out your product key, but for later versions of Windows you have to use a program to find it as the key is encrypted for privacy.

There are also ways to 'crack' Windows so the activation stuff is removed, which is also illegal. Plus if you have a genuine Windows product key then its kind of wasting money if you do that.

 

A fresh install of windows might help. If you do this, you should move all of your data to an external hard drive, then erase it and reinstall. Once that's done, move your data back.

I know no one wants to pay money, but buying a solid state drive would increase startup times and applicaton load times significantly, and pay off in the long run.

 

SSDs are still pretty expensive, plus they don't offer that much storage space unless you're prepared to spend a few hundred. They're mainly popular in things like gaming, but honestly I really don't think spending an extra few hundred £ is worth a 2 second faster map loading time.

Plus its not always easy to replace a laptop HDD / SDD if you don't know what you're doing.

 

Honestly, its just about as easy to replace a laptop storage drive as a desktop....at least in all of the laptops ive ever owned it has been.

Honestly for gaming, SSDs have no value to me. I only buy SSD's for boot drives....so as you can imagine...I dont buy a very big capacity SSD. For bootup they make an INCREDIBLE difference if your computer supports the SATA-3 interface.

 

It took at least 40 minutes to load up this time...

It wouldn't load at all before, so I ran in safe mode (which still took longer than normal) and did a system restore. It still took a good 20 minutes to load up this time. I've done everything Laptop65 said. I'm going to restart it now and hope everything runs fine...

 

Sounds like you need to format very soon if it's taking THAT long to start up. When did you get the laptop?

Did any of my advice have any effect?