Windows 98 takes long time to boot-up

[Feral Geek]

I am looking at a PC for a friend of mine which has Windows 98 installed and it takes at least 10 minutes to boot-up. (Very old system) Once it has reached the GUI, it runs fine. Here are the specs: 1. Compaq Deskpro XL 6150
Pentium Pro Processor (Windows 98 Operating System)
Drive C: 993 MB
Drive D: 993 MB
32 MB RAM

Any suggestions as to why it takes so long to boot-up? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. I have run scandisk, defragged the HD.
Thanks in advance.
Feral Geek

 

[Deathblow]

Have you checked for viruses, trojans, and the like? Might want to boot up with a boot log and check for any errors in there as well.

 

[flavallee]

F_G:

According to this site(I struck out with the Crucial and Kingston sites), the Compaq Deskpro XL 6150 has 4 RAM slots and supports a maximum of 512 MB of RAM.

Windows 98 is going to run very slow with only 32 MB of RAM, and some programs are going to take long to load - if they don't freeze up first. You need to increase it to at least 128 MB of RAM.

The startup load also needs to be trimmed down as much as possible.

Even though 2 hard drives are installed, they equal less than 2 GB, so you need to work at cleaning out as much junk as possible.

You didn't mention how fast the processor is, but I'm guessing that it's 233 MHz or slower.

Clean the link below and read some of the articles there. They should be helpful to you.