pc takes a long time to boot

hi

my pc takes a long time to boot

also take a very long time to shutdown when external HDD is connected? sometimes have to force shutdown (press-hold power button) to get it to shutdown?

it seems to be related to the external HDD as when the external HDD is not connected it boots quicker and shuts down very quick

boots in around 80 secs shuts down around 15 secs

any help advice info would be greatly appreciated.

thanks

here are some screens to hopefully aid in a disgnosis of the problem..
again any help info would be greatly appreciated

Does it do this in safe mode? Try a clean boot: How to perform a clean boot to troubleshoot a problem in Windows Vista, Windows 7, or Windows 8 Also I would ditch Norton.

hi thanks foor reply
and thanks for tips i will try them see if it has an effect and report back results
as for the norton side of things
a. why ditch norton? and what do you reccomend ?

b.i have always had norton on there and used to boot quickly and shut down quickly this is a recent thing and seems to be related to external hard disk drive as when its not switched on for boot it boots reasonably quickly around 80secs and
shuts down in 10-15secs
however with external plugged in if i try to (safely remove in mycomputer window) before shut down i get not responding and if i shut down with hdd still connected so that win shuts down with drive still attached it dosent shut down at all i have to force shut down (press and hold power button) strange isnt it?

thanks

Norton is a known resource hog. I and most others here, use the free Windows Security Essentials combined with the Windows Firewall and the free Malwarebytes for a free once a week scan.

It's possible that your BIOS may spend more time checking your external hard drive for a possible boot record. I would disable all other boot devices except your primary hard drive. If you ever need to boot from something else, it doesn't take long to enable it again in the BIOS. That may at least help with boot up. As for shut down, townsbg is right that Norton may be a bit more active than you'd like at shutdown. Try disabling it and see.

hi thanks everyone for tips and advice much apreciated

i have hjust started my pc without the external hdd connected with nothing else changed. so norton enabled no startup items removed or anything like that and took around 70 secs to boot, so appears everything is ok when drive not inserted its more related to the external drive than software or set up etc? also it used to be ok with the drive inserted its only recently started affecting boot and shutdown performance.
(since i installed macrium and used it to create an image and store it on that drive)

could it be related to that? when its connected its like it wont let go of the drive ? if i click safely remove the my computer window goes greyed over and (not responding) message on it? then if i try to shut down instead of first safely removing (so just shutdown with drive connected) it takes forever to shut down where as normally with drive connected used to take 10-15 secs to shutdown same as it does now without drive connected

thats whats so strange it used to be ok its a recent change as i say since macrium was installed and macrium image of system drive created?

thanks again for all your support and advice

update

have just timed it
boot: full start up (not re-start) 78secs
shut down : full (not re-start) 10secs

however on shutdown a mesage displayed : taskeng task sheduler engine was preventing shutdown ?

hi

i did clean boot and restart
1st i removed all start up items and all but 4 services see screen below restart time (48 shutdown 110 boot)
this time i disabled macrium image mounting service also.
2nd i removed all start up and all but 3 services see screen below restart time (31 shutdown 101 boot)
this time i enabled all services but macrium image mounting service i left that disabled
3rd time removed all start up and 1 service (macrium image mounting service) see screen below
restart time (28 sec shutdown 58 sec boot)

does this mean it is the macrium image mounting service to blame? and is it ok to remove it somehow without affecting macrium.. if so how would i do this? thanks

Macrium is an imaging software that is used in HD recovery. What settings do you have on this piece of software, does it backup every day? Does it do it as a file is changed? where does it backup to? Does it backup when you turn off the computer?

hi roy69. thanks for reply

i have not changed any of the standard settings. it has been installed and used to make one image on the fly no scheduled back ups etc have been set

thanks