volting

Indeed I have xampp, I changed both mysql and apache to manual start, and ran the trace again for 6 runs. I timed the boot to the desktop with a stopwatch on my phone, takes 35 seconds to desktop, which is excellent considering it took about 3.5 mins before I started optimizing... I had a feeling since I bought this laptop a few months ago that hdd was a bottleneck and had been contemplating upgrading, think Ill get one of seagates hybrids Thanks for all your time and help, your skill is legendary!

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I tried running the trace again but the problem persists. I check the disk utilization graph, most of the io utilization is system which the majority is unknown(0) so no problem there, next is svchost of which the vast majority is from readyboot

Ok Iv removed both Soluto and AVG, what do recommend instead of AVG ? HDD is a 250GB 5400RPM Western Digital -- WDC WD2500BEVT-22A23T0 The laptop is fairly new so Id imagine its in sata mode, although Im not sure that I can verify this, I checked in the Bios, the mode is't explicitly stated there, although the drive is refered to as IDE0, but I think (hope) this is just poor choice of wording... In the Device Manager under IDE ATA / ATAPI controllers there is only one entry, an Intel SATA ACHI Controller, which Im guessing proves my assumuption to be correct. As for the disk io, I expanded the system entry, the bigest offender is "Unknown" and doesnt show any more detail when expanded.

Not really sure why avg shows up, as I dont have it set to start at boot, soluto appears to use alot so maybe I should remove that from the startup. Im not really sure how much is normal usage for the system processes, maybe you can determine anomalies from the screenshot... the top 28 of 45 are included

I check all the graphs but I dont see any mention of what applications are accessing the hdd. edit: Nevermind I see that you can right click the graph for more info, Ill check now...

I had the first hotfix installed already, installed the second.. and I ran the sfc / scannow which didnt find any problems I ran the trace for two reboots and checked the first etl file, which gave the same error as before (when trying to generate the second xml file ) upon opening.

Hi Andre, I have eliminated as much as I could from startup, first using autoruns. Then I ran the comand as suggested in your first post which appeared to run fine, and reduced my boot time from 3.5 minutes to 2 ( according to soluto) But when I run the command to generate the second xml file I get following warning, and the xml file is empty Some potential issues, 1] The readyboost services doesnt appear in services list (services.exe) although it does appear in the registry and its start command is set to 0 2] OS shows as win7RTM in the xbootmgr.log although it is actually win7 with sp1 (home premium x64, acer oem) 3] This is the only other susipcious line in the log (I think) Failed to save prefetcher data (C:\Windows\prefetch\layout.ini) in cab archive (stage 1, error 0) I carried the whole procedure 3 times and the result is the same everytime, any ideas to what the problem maybe? Regards, V Edit: The warning suggests increasing the MinBuffers, MaxBuffers and BufferSize for xperf, I tried this but I still get the warning