laptop issue.Very slow to start up

[bennjamin]

hi all Little issue

My Dell has an issue. Its a Dell inspiron 1501
AMD athlon 64x2 , dual core processor @ 1.7MHZ.
2gb of ram

When booting up of recent , the laptop is VERY slow to load all programs started once windows loads. the HD light stays on constant for a few minutes.
Also noticed that looking at the system properties , it registers the CPU with only 700mhz during this "stall" time.
If i try to load anything such as firefox it takes a painstaking minute or two for any HD activity and loading.

I have defragged , have currect versions of spybotSD/AntirVIR/hijackthis and run scans all the time. Nothing has ever jumped up.

It just as if recently the computer suddenly the computer became a dog to load up - almost like it needs to wamr up to work at all.

Any ideas or scans or anything i can post ( hijackthis results etc) that might help out ?

thanks

[Woodstock]

which Power PLan do ya have it on ? is running on battery or via power ?

when they on battery some laptops go 1/2 speed of CPU and if ya got power option on power saver it will half cpu speed to save on power

[Farmsky]

Do a CTRL + Alt + Del and determine which 'Processes' is/are using the resources during start up ie the one using cpu %.

One of those viral anti-spyware programs will probably be the culprit.

PS Spybot has seen it's best days.

has a light version of Spyware Doctor.

[Philquad]

do a msconfig, kill everything but the av
"feel the difference"
if its running cool n quiet, its supoozed to run only a % of cpu when not under strain.
otherwise, format it

[Colin 2905]

Checked the DMA setting?

[Philquad]

admin, get ridda mega upload.

[z80]

Run scandisk, (assuming that obvious issues are eliminated)

Your hard disk may have bad sectors that have been reallocated to alternates.(and alternates are failing as well)

It can be one of the first symptoms of hard disk failure.
Especially if the hard disk light stays on, it just keeps retrying.

The cause is shock due to machine being dropped.