So the other day I fired up a Virtual PC of a windows XP install to bypass Rapidshare's downloading limit for the lulz. I noticed that it started up really fast. Timing it, it was exactly 18 seconds between when I hit start, to when the desktop was fully loaded. It made me realize that my computer was really sluggish when it came to booting from a complete shutdown. The first thing I do in this situation is head to msconfig and disable anything unnecessarily starting up with windows. So I choose the 4 or 5 things I deemed unnecessary and hit apply, only to be hit with this error.


I questioned my computer out loud, and double-checked that I was, in fact, still the administrator. TO GOOGLE!

I find that the most common cause is *shudder* HP printer software messing with permissions. I have an HP printer, so I set about fixing the problem. No good, still can't change anything. BACK TO GOOGLE! This time I see that it could be McAfee antivirus, which I *shudder* also have, but only because ASU requires me to have it (although they make an exception to linuxfags and macfags). So I try following the instructions listed on the McAfee site, only to find that none of the paths it gives exist. I search my entire computer; all 4 hard drives totalling 711.9GB of data. I find the executable, but when I run it, it tells me that it can't uninstall the framework service that's supposedly causing my problem.

On a side note, I almost went crazy. I tried 2 or 3 other things from google to no avail, and was getting real ticked off at this point. And the screaming kid outside my window was NOT helping my situation.

Completely uninstalling McAfee only resulted in said service sticking around on my system, as well as my problem. One last google. I see an obscure reference about a gentlman having a problem getting McAfee to work at all. Sure enough, the solution given worked for me also. Apparently, McAfee was protecting itself, and was causing me problems. I had to rereinstall it, head to it's configuration, re-disable it completely, and uncheck "Access Protection." YAY it worked. Unfortunately, preventing those things from starting with windows did not make my system boot faster. I timed it, 1 minute 18 seconds from bootloader to fully-loaded desktop.

I'll make this last part short. Another large cause of slow booting is the Windows Prefetch which optimizes windows by tracking what programs I use most. Unfortunately, it loads up with crap. So I baleted all of my prefetch cache and changed it to only prefetch boot items. In the end my computer now boots from bootloader to fully-loaded desktop in 40 seconds flat. WIN.