hi all.first off,just a thanks to the folks on this forum who have made my transition from win98 to win2k as painless as possible,saved me a few sleepless nights and saved some hair on my head
now,my latest prob is with the bootup time of my system from power on to the desktop,which sometimes takes in excess of 3 mins...when i first installed win2k it was blazing fast.now,i dont really have that much stuff installed(compared to 98),as i usually use 2k for my net and frontpage2k and burning cds.its just annoying its taking so long to get to the desktop after initially being so quick.it gets to the logon screen quick,when i enter the password it then sits on a blue screen for a couple of minutes until the desktop(i have active desktop enabled,so i can use the backgrounds that come with win2k) and my installed proggies load...

any ideas guys????

also,is there any desktop themes type programs for 2k?( does microsoft have one for it?)

thanks in advace

Does it speed up when you disable Active Desktop?
It is a very resource-hungry waste of time, that is unless you 'need' it.
As far as themes go, goto run > themes. There aint any there, but I am sure a huntaround the net might bring up something. Never looked myself. The less interactive mods the better if you know what I mean. If you are going to run 'nicelooky' things you are gonna have to be prepared for a performance drop in other areas.

BTW, how much RAm have you installed?

Yak

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yak..thanks for the tips..i,ll disable active desktop on my next boot and see if i gain any speed..as for ram,i should be ok,im running 196 megs.....

Have you tried defragmenting your hard drive? After a number of installs it can get pretty messy.

There a couple of things you should check -

1. what programs are running on startup. The places to check are in your startup group (start menu->programs->startup) and in the registry (run regedit) under these keys -
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnce

If you see anything here that you didn't explicitly enable to run at startup - remove it.

2. Check which services are running. Services all load when the OS boots up so they always get first ***** at consuming resources. This article will show you how -http://www.3dspotlight.net/tweaks/win2k_services/index.shtml

3. Check your event logs to see if any errors/unusual activity is taking place at boot time. Right click on My Computer->Manage, and in the tree, choose EventViewer->System, and look for errors/warnings.

You can email me for any help.

As for desktop themes, these links should help you -
http://www.desktoparchitect.com/ - Free theme support http://www.stardock.com/products/windowblinds/download.html - much more than themes, change the whole look and feel!

Have fun

defragging just made mine slower, so do what i do, just leave the computer on all of the time, its not like its unstable or anything

try getting rid of everything that u put on ur startup and removing those taskbar icons

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2 Computers (networked)both have :

Intel SE440BX2
Pentium III 700Mhz (100)
LS-120 120 Mb (100MHz)
Fujitsu 17.3 GB Ultra DMA 66/10.2 GB Ultra DMA 66
Mitsubihi 50X IDE
Creative Vibra PCI 128bit
Matrox Millenium G400 16Mb AGP/Diamond Speedstar 8Mb AGP
Bay Netgear 10/100PCI
Medium ATX Tower case
120W Multimedia
MS INternet KB (PS2)
MS Win2000 Pro

you also have to remember system file protection plays a roll in here too, the more and more things you install the more and more files get protected by the system so everyboot its replacing those files that were 'replaced by unrecognized versions' which makes the system take longer to boot. Do what everyone else with 2k does leave it on, that way you dont have to worry about boot times and it doesnt end up eating resources like 9x/ME does when you leave em running.

actually defraggin DOES help
also u might wanna try pagedefrag @ www.sysinternals.com
a GREAT tool for ppl who think every nanosecond counts

"
the more and more things you install the more and more files get protected by the system so everyboot its replacing those files that were 'replaced by unrecognized versions' which makes the system take longer to boot.
"

That's not true. SFP immediately puts the original versions back the second they are replaced by 'unrecognized versions.'

Just curious, do you happen to have a SoundBlaster Live! sound card?

I found that as soon as you install the Win2k Live! drivers (without Liveware) your login time gets alot longer!! I have seen this on more than one machine so its for sure the drivers. As soon as I went back to the default drivers (that came with Win2k) my login time was back to normal. Just my two cents.

I know that alot of icons can cause your desktop to load alot slower. In WIndows 9X there is a file called shellicon.csh or something like that in the C:\Windows directory that you can delete and it will recreate the file more efficiently so your icons will load faster the second time you boot after the file has been recreated. Does anybody know which file W2K uses for icon info?

Actually anything place in the DLLCACHE folder is protected. I'll try to find the knowledge base article.