Slow Shutdown halfway solved..........

[Dooin' it]

Well, sometimes I tell myself that if there weren't computer problems, I'd have nothing to do.......he he.......

Problem: Build for a buddy I was so proud of. XP 2000+/256pc2100/80GB/52xCDRW/Nvidia MX200 decides it's gonna shutdown like a slug.

***Latest new software install is Norton Antivirus 2004. (Hmmmmm) I've heard of probs with the whole Nortin suite slowing things down, but not just AV itself.

Solution: After getting ready to pull my hair out I decided to "msconfig" ......(FWIW, this is WinME)......and not allow ANY of the startup programs to load. (I always forget the 2 essentials for startup so I always select this way instead of just unchecking the rest). Anyway, now it's fine. What spooked me was that Scandisk and/or Defrag would not run with programs in background. (weird?)

Anyway, I have to narrow it down to which program is doing this, but I'm guessing it's Norton AV 2004 since the others are volume/clock/printer/aol. I disabled NAV checking the floppy on shutdown (annoying) but don't see any other settings in the NAV menu to allow a faster shutdown ??????????

[John Prophet]

XP has always shutdown sort of slow for me...on several builds.

I can boot a w98se system and an XP system at the same time....the XP beats the W98se hands down on boot time.

I can hit "shut down" at the same time and the W98se is shutdown and snoring by the time the XP system is still tucking itself in.

[Dooin' it]

Very true John, I'm not exactly thrilled with XP's shutdown time-frame, but this is on Windows ME and WinME starts & shutdown faster than any other O/S I've ever seen.

That aside, I also wanted to mention that I disabled power management in the bios as a suggestion from someone else, but that did absolutely nothing, so I'm quite certain it's NAV. (I guess I'd be best off taking NAV out of the startup list solely, and I suppose that'll give me my answer for NAV) duh!

[John Prophet]

Im sorry, i saw XP thinking it was the OS when really it was athlon XP, lol.

Yes, windows ME is faster on boots etc than 98..I think they had a 30sec boot target in mind for ME..30secs AFTER the bios handed if off to the OS..something like that.

[Dooin' it]

Here's the best part............

this whole mess started when he couldn't get it to boot up. I think I've figured this one out too but took me a sec.

He'd start it up, it'd propose the boot menu for safe mode, but no-go no matter what he selected. The boot sequence was going in a circle. I think I've nailed it down to the cmos battery! It resets the cpu setup/cmos/etc. so that cpu and memory are runing 100/100 instead of 133/133. Once I reset them both, the system is fine. Well............this is the 2nd time it's done this & since I know he isn't clearing the cmos himself, I believe the battery is weak/low/dead. Never had to change the battery before, but I guess there's a 1st time for everything.

[John Prophet]

I think they last like 7 years, lol. They used to have the old "dallas" something or another chips with a charge built in, no battery, lol..when it died I guess maybe they had a post for an external or something. (saw them on old Packard Bells)