Oookay.

For the last 2 months, it's been taking my computer 4-5 minutes to actually start up. It seems to freeze after the icons for Task Scheduler and McAfee Home Edition load in the bottom toolbar. Some of the icons on the desktop "freeze" (aren't loaded). During this time, I can't do anything - not even right-click or even ctrl-alt-del. I just wait it out.

My hard drive is less than a quarter full (15GB of 80GB). I have 504 MB RAM. Win 98 SE. I think it's Pentium 4, but I can't see how to tell in Win98. Go on, tell me how easy it is to tell... but Properties doesn't TELL ME!!!! <grinds teeth, then stops as teeth protest>

Now... I just gritted my teeth over this and thought I'd put up with it. But... now when I try to burn my CD at 8x (the fastest speed this burner does), with the wave files actually compiled on my hard disk drive, there's a used read buffer failure. Part of the way into the burn, the used read buffer drops down to 59%, then steadily declines until it's zilch. Then, of course, the buffer level thingy drips down to 0 as well, and the burn fails.

I can still burn at 4x, but that is SOOOO slow.

I've taken various steps - increased the buffer space in Nero (which is the programme I use). It didn't help. I did a scandisc and a defrag. No help. I experimented, tried this and that...

Now I'm wondering if the two things (slow startup and burn failure) are related. How can I tell what's causing the 5-minute delay? And what could the problem be with the burner? If there's anyone here with any experience or ideas, please help. Is it the burner itself? Is it my computer's RAM?

Help gratefully accepted.

Did you try 'RAMBooster' that I sent you?...

Try this program. It's help me and a few others.

Reg Cleaner

Maybe some of your core system files and drivers are fragmented... there's a program released by Windows that can help cut your startup time really well ( I've gotten it down to 10 seconds ). I'll just have to think of what it is... Hrrmm, I can't seem to think of it at the moment, but I'll let you know when I remember it.

In the meantime, don't forget to scan for spyware ( how can any of you forget about spyware!? For shame... ) Here are two great programs you can use:

Spybot S&D: http://spybot.safer-networking.de/
Ad-aware: http://www.lavasoftusa.com

Spear, with the new 1.3 rc5 version of Spybot you don't need Adaware anymore.

Spybot - SD

Actually PW, those were seperate recommendations for her to choose one or the other... not meaning for her to do both. I use Spybot exclusively anyways.

And the program I was mentioning earlier as helping slash your boot times is Bootvis. The order to use this is "Trace Next Startup", and then afterwards, it'll show some pretty graphs showing what your computer does when it boots up, then you click for it to Optimize and it'll go to work. Once it starts to optimize you can wander off and do something else for a bit while it works... automatically. It will get your system to boot in at least 30 seconds, so have fun. The page says that it is for only XP, but it used to say from 95 up to XP, so I'm assuming this still holds true for the older Windows users. If not, my bad.

Microsoft claims that Bootvis will not speed up boot times as advertised elsewhere, and goes a step further in claiming that XP automates the process every 3 days. Irregardless of this, many system tweakers who used Bootvis still saw vast improvements, so it works.

I'll take a look at it this weekend. My boot time is under 60 sec. I'm running a fully updated version of 98 SE. I also check daily to see what is in my startup list.

Yeah, I never really got a chance to test it in 98 since my 98 cd got majorly killed in some freak accident, but I seem to recall seeing somewhere that it will work in 98. Might as well back up any important files of yours, just to be on the paranoid, safe side.

I'll be upgradeing to XP Pro soon. So don't worry to much about it.

Speaking of which, Microsoft is only releasing the 64-bit XP to OEM's. Bad move.

Oookay... so far I'm going through all the possibilities very carefully. I don't know why, but something I did or did not do fixed the slow start-up. However, now the Google toolbar has disappeared. I've no idea if there's any connection.

It hasn't affected the burner problem at all. So... rats, it could be my CD burner. I can still burn at 4x, but the question is... for how long?

I'll bring you hourly updates on the situation.

<pause>

Okay, not hourly. Just when I find out something...

*crosses his fingers for Al*

Riiight. I installed RamBooster v1.6, and optimised about 350 Mb. Then I tried to burn. At 8x, the Free RAM % went down regularly but slowly, and then - the little field where it reports CPU-usage... that went up to 100% as Nero did its used read buffer collapse.

So... hmm. What's going on??? <begs and pleads with computer to be nice>

I use Nero myself. Don't set the buffer above 80 megs.

I thought the buffer was used out of your hard disk, in case you ran out of space on the memory stack?

Anyways, if you're still having trouble with your memory Almirena, you should probably run a diagnostic on your memory sticks. I had to do that one time on my brother's computer and found out he had faulty memory. The program I used was MemTest86. You use Windows to create a bootable floppy disk with memtest on it ( the site provides instructions on how to do it ) and insert it into your floppy drive. You might want to print out a list of the commands from the site so that you have those handy, since the program works before the OS is even loaded.

Just read along the top line with the columns on this program, and you should be able to determine when there are errors and when not. Then you can use the program to select one stick or the other for individual testing.

SF, I could be wrong, but I believe Nero actually uses ROM memory instead of using harddisk space. I'm running 5x and it tells me not to go above 80. I'm pretty sure about the ROM deal, but I'll double check.

Well, I'm merely generalizing since most programs will use a buffer space on the hard disk to complement the RAM in your system. Windows makes use of such a buffer as well.

Most, but not Nero5. I just looked it up. In the buffer area it tells you not to set if above 40% of your ROM memory and not above 80mb. Nero does however use the Harddisk for cache.