PC taking forever to boot

[gi0rgi0]

Well this started a few weeks ago and it seems to be getting worse as in taking sometimes
up to 25 minutes for the hdd to stop. After that im able to use the pc somewhat normally. after that it sometimes will take awhile for say the browser to open. Or wmp will take a while and will sometimes crash.

Im not sure if its a virus or the hdd. Im running ZA security suite using xp 32 sp2

There was something that was weird. All of a sudden there would be something dl'ing.
Now I know I never asked to DL anything so I would cancel it of course. I forget what
the letters and numers were. I think it started with an I or 1. But I ran virus/spyware
checks and it did find stuff and I guess deleted it im still having the same problem.

Before this the machine was running pretty good for over a year.
I also have a WD 160gb thats almost full. Only about 30gb left.

 

[Quiksilver]

Full system spec's?

Also it still sounds like your infected, what did you use to scan with? Was it "ZA security suite" if so it's garbage, I had it before on my old PC; didn't do crap other than use up system resources.
Scan with a better Anti-Virus like aVast! (Which is free) and double up spyware scans with Lavasoft's Ad-aware & Spybot Search and Destroy(both also free).

 

[robisbell]

get Auslogics Disk Defrag, run it, and reverify total drive space and available.

 

[daveybrat]

Sounds like your hard drive could be running in PIO mode instead of DMA like it's supposed to. In PIO mode it will be drastically slower and take forever for things to boot and load.

I would also test your hard drive with the manufacturer's test to make sure it's good. Bad sectors on a hard drive will also cause significant slowdown.

 

[SunSamurai]

Defrag is a waste of time and solves nothing. Either your drive is in a low throughput mode, or what its doing it trying to read damaged parts of the drive over and over. I doubt its a virus unless you neglect to update your Antivirus profiles.

 

[robisbell]

giorgio, so can you let us know what you've done and if you've tried any of our advice.