Ummmm

before i changed out my HDD to a SSD mine got to the point of booting up i around 3 mins (The HDD was on it's way out)

mabe its a prob with your HDD...?

okay

I did check and the drive is 0% fragmented. usb/bluetooth gear, printer (shared with my wife's laptop), wireless adapter and wireless mouse.

Occasionally: external hard drive, couple of flash drives and camera. no bluetooth.

honestly, it's been slowing down somewhat for some time. the only updates from back then, not sure, might have been are window updates, avg11, and possibly a jave update or two. recent updates have been sks7, wb7.2 (rolled back to 7.1) and windows updates. that's all that I can think of.

there was one thing that happen since all of this has occurred and may have an impact. I decided to switch from AVG to MSSE. took off avg and installed msse but didn't reboot. playing a game I had a freeze that required a turn off the power solution. on boot I got the message of an incomplete shutdown and I let window attempt to sort out the problem and when it asked to start from a restore point I said "okay". well, no antivirus and a lot of avg folders in the system. I deleted registry entries and renamed/deleted the folders and then reinstalled avg. Everything seems okay and I have now deleted the renamed folders. but again, this occurred after the boot time was getting long and was the result of an effort to see if this was the problem by switching av programs.

you assume correctly, but I'll make an attempt if needed.

the HDD is why I have a lower preformance index (5.9), all other parts of the check are 7.+.

^ Time for a SSD.

This board had a problem with earlier bios releases with anything over 3 GB. That has since been corrected. My guess is that the board's memory controller is having problems initializing on a cold boot.

http://support.asus.com/download/download.aspx?SLanguage=en-us

if you want an ssd and value customer service/tech support, stay away from ocz. i bought an ocz vertex 2 120 a few weeks ago. when it came time to update the firmware, the ocz toolbox couldn't see my drive. their form of tech support these days is one email message a day instead of a phone call. after a week of email messages, i was fed up. i had asked numerous times for a simple 20 minute call but was told each time they do tech support via email so they can monitor and track the conversation. well, i called corsair to ask a few questions regarding their force series of drives and explained why i was calling. the corsair tech guy (ram guy) told me how to correct the ocz drive's faulty behavior. it's amazing what a simple phone call can do. anyway, i returned the ocz drive and got a corsair force 120 instead.

for years, i praised and sold ocz ram but never will again. they used to do tech support via phone but not now. their method with the daily email message just doesn't cut it with me. it's strictly corsair for me now.

i've had two great experiences with corsair customer service/tech support within the last 12 months. one with the ssd and one regarding my corsair dominator ram. i had purchased two 4 GB kits of Dominator DDR-3 memory. well, those four sticks had black heatsink fins and i really wanted blue ones. i called corsair and asked if i could purchase four blue heatsink fins. they had red ones in their  online store but no blue ones. i was told they would replace my ram with an 8 GB kit which had the same specs as the memory i had purchased but had blue fins and a cooling fan module. they didn't ask me for a card number or anything. they sent the new stuff to me with an address label to use when sending my memory sticks to them. folks, i call that great customer service!

yes I bought with the 12. should I go ahead and update the bios drivers? should I start with the first one missed, install and reboot, then install the next one and follow that sequence?

MadDeez: one thing at a time and thanks.

Hey GMC2

what program do you use for checking your files and reg files...?

You do the latest one. It is inclusive of all earlier versions.

Let me preface any thought of a bios flash: If you are not familiar in doing it, my advice is don't. Take it to a shop and let them do it. When flashing, you have an equal chance of killing the board as you do in being successful. 

do I need to do this?

files, just the av program and disk defrag usually checks for fragmented files, nothing that checks for relevancy.

reg: nothing, but I will go in a remove program references that are no longer valid.

To be perfectly honest, I doubt it. Your CPU die model is supported and the memory issue is marginal. If this machine ran fine when you bought it and it hasn't changed hardware-wise, I'd do a fresh install of Windows. You're in overkill mode on security and have screwed around with files enough that something in the software column is probably hanging it. Do the basic Windows install and time the boot, if it's still slow, than address the bios issue

thank you yrag, your help has been much appreciated.

Oh, one last thing. I upgraded to win7 from vista and bought the computer with vista installed. what problems can I expect.

Maybe that's the reason for the hang, too.... Upgrade vs Clean Install.

I'd do a clean install, start fresh with no excess baggage hanging around. Make sure you back up everything first though.

Yeah start clean install....

then install AVG 2011 and a program like Tuneup utilities(to fix small probs with system)........ Or Norton 360 is great!!! $$$ for this one.

Hope all goes well for ya mate...

I'm using AVG and Tuneup Utilities (both 2011) they seem to have a smaller foot print on System.... than most others!!!

And as i said before my system boots up in 22-24 seconds with Skype and MSN ready

I'd try to backup everything to a second physical hard drive if you have one....if not then make sure to backup all your data at least.

Download the drivers you'll need before you start the re-install process and copy them to a cd or flash drive.

Put n your Win 7 DVD and run the setup.exe Make sure to choose the "Custom" installation when you're asked what kind of installation you want.

What Lantec said...and remember, kiddos, if you don't know what a program does, you probably don't need it taking up space on your HD.

(psssst....I've been using Avira over AVG...lighter footprint....uses a lot less resources...less false positives...catches all the bugs and it's a freebie...just saying)

Do not do that.

Is this an OEM or do you have a Win 7 key? 

it's a home professional upgrade and I have the product key.

I think it's time to re-install. had to go to a restore point to load windows just now, not getting any better.. I have a 400gig external that I can transfer data to, plenty of room.

never doing this before, what should I do. should I copy the whole c:/ drive over or just the data files, figure I'll have to reload all the programs anyhow, oh joy, but at least...