After working out which program had caused some performance problems*
with my Toshiba Equiuum laptop - Kontiki, used with an on-demand tv
program for Channel 4 in the UK - I reinstalled Windows. Unlike a
previous occasion of doing this to get rid of all trace of Norton,
startup has slowed down, in fact it seems to pause, and had done
right
from the start of the new install. How can I sort this out? I'm
puzzled as to why this should happen when I used the exact same
method
and Recovery Disk, supplied by Toshiba.

I've looked at Task Manager to see if I can see where it's stalling
but I can't tell. I had to uninstall Norton again as it's loaded
from
the Recovery Disk but the stall was happening regardless of this.
Anything involving the Software Explorer bit of Windows Defender?


I thought it might be the Sidebar but it's not that, and this had all
worked fine before anyway.

I have yet to reinstall all the updates, but an initial 100 meg's
worth, the ones from before SP1,
didn't rectify the problem.


I had the terrible thought that Recovery Disks only work a finite
number of times in order to get people ot pay for a copy of Windows.


*The performance 'problems' were possibly nothing serious or
noticeable, just me reacting to an exclamation mark in a yellow
triangle, but it niggled me and I thought it might get worse as other
software was added etc.


Thanks in advance for all input. I'm reasonably computer literate
but
if anything might need explaining please err on the side of caution.
Thanks.

kplumm..

Arbitrarily doing, "I reinstalled Windows." is rarely a good idea.
Like it or not, part of being a computer user/owner is figuring out
issues that affect your use experiences and working on them if they
become problems. It's slow, tedious, and not particularly fun to many
but, it *should* be done. This way you learn what works and what
doesn't. The first thing I would suggest in order to *isolate* what is
causing your slow-down is to _temporarily_ disable you virus program -
Norton in this case. Do this off-line as to not cause any potential
problems for your data. You should be able to do this by
right-clicking the icon on the start bar and selecting disable or
exit. It will come up with all kinds of warnings and cautions, OK them
to disable the program. I've also found that some firewalls are
resource hogs and tend to take a good deal of resources not only in
computer performance but memory allocation also. If you've got the
ability to disable the firewall, do it _temporarily_ as well. If
you're running Vista, you'll want to make sure you've got a minimum of
the recommended amount of memory if not significantly more than that!
As with nearly any OS, the more memory you can give it, the more
responsive (up to a point) it will become. There's nothing that will
slow a computer down to a crawl like not having enough memory for the
OS and the applications you're running. Vista is VERY hungry with its
memory requirements - therefore, the more you can feed that monster,
the more responsive your system will be (up to a point). Why up to a
point? If you're running an older processor, even with sufficient
memory, it is more than possible to not have sufficient computing
resources (computing "horsepower"). In that case, your investment in
additional memory will only buy you so much performance due to
processor limitations.

Notice what I'm suggesting here. One by one, we're disabling items
that are memory dependent, run in the background and [typically] take
considerable computing resources. By essentially (temporarily)
shutting them off, we free up some memory for the OS and relieve the
processor of at least two very resource-centric processes. IF you find
that after doing this, your systems is substantially more responsive
you have two choices.

1. Chose other anti-virus / firewall alternatives
2. Consider additional computing resources (higher performance
platform)

This is keeping in mind that you have much more than sufficient memory
to run Vista. If not, that will be the first thing you'll want to
explore - MORE memory. Once you're sure that this isn't an issue, then
you can check the above one by one and determine through the Task
Manager how much computing resources these resident applications are
taking.

Cheers,
Mr. Mentor



"kplumm" <kplumm********.com> wrote in message
news:47122e4a-b361-4e3d-b6a0-d48455b8c0bf@34g2000hsh.googlegroups.com...
| After working out which program had caused some performance
problems*
| with my Toshiba Equiuum laptop - Kontiki, used with an on-demand tv
| program for Channel 4 in the UK - I reinstalled Windows. Unlike a
| previous occasion of doing this to get rid of all trace of Norton,
| startup has slowed down, in fact it seems to pause, and had done
| right
| from the start of the new install. How can I sort this out? I'm
| puzzled as to why this should happen when I used the exact same
| method
| and Recovery Disk, supplied by Toshiba.
|
| I've looked at Task Manager to see if I can see where it's stalling
| but I can't tell. I had to uninstall Norton again as it's loaded
| from
| the Recovery Disk but the stall was happening regardless of this.
| Anything involving the Software Explorer bit of Windows Defender?
|
|
| I thought it might be the Sidebar but it's not that, and this had
all
| worked fine before anyway.
|
| I have yet to reinstall all the updates, but an initial 100 meg's
| worth, the ones from before SP1,
| didn't rectify the problem.
|
|
| I had the terrible thought that Recovery Disks only work a finite
| number of times in order to get people ot pay for a copy of Windows.
|
|
| *The performance 'problems' were possibly nothing serious or
| noticeable, just me reacting to an exclamation mark in a yellow
| triangle, but it niggled me and I thought it might get worse as
other
| software was added etc.
|
|
| Thanks in advance for all input. I'm reasonably computer literate
| but
| if anything might need explaining please err on the side of caution.
| Thanks.