1. Sluggish security software. I hate antivirus software. I hate all-in-one security solutions even more. As it turned out, the slowdown on two systems here was directly attributable to overvigilant security software. On a pair of notebooks, the time before full network access was available was being delayed by 15-60 seconds as file-system drivers and network filters loaded for AVG Antivirus and Avast. I also noticed that shutdowns were taking up to a minute on these two systems. When I replaced these two programs with Nod32 and Windows Live OneCare, respectively, the delays shrunk to 5 seconds or less at startup, and shutdowns returned to a normal 30 seconds or less.
Either they’re dumb or they are running Vista on 386 with 8MB of RAM… Shutdown taking 1 minute!? Ok, i had few such situations, mostly when i installed something big (system wide) and OS took long to pack everything before shuting down. But regular shutdowns don’t take longer than 10 seconds top. Bootup? Around 30 seconds depending on state of my system partition health (fragmentation and other junk files). Hardware is nothing less or more than what anyone would expect for Vista. 3GHz C2D, 2GB of RAM, x1950 Pro and 320GB SATA300 HDD. These tests are full of BS anyway, you cannot establish the same boot sequences twice, especially not on Vista which optimizes itself on it’s own (thats why some boots take longer than others, same for shutdowns). These are ocasional, but most of the time they are very fast.
OK just timed it, boot up was 48 seconds including typing in my account password.
That’s on a Conroe @3.32ghz , 2gb ram, geforce 8800gt, 320gb hdd with Vista Ultimate and of course with the latest “sluggish” avast! installed. ;D