I'm not worried about waiting for the system to boot, no worries. I was just curious if that was a normal behavior. Thanks!!

OK guys I am running into a few problems so I thought I would seek some advice here. Thanks in advance, I appreciate it.

Audio port is very loose. It is a 3.5 mm jack. It is built in to the motherboard. I borrowed a newish sound card from a friend yet there is no drivers for a ESS1988S soundcard. Turns out they only make 32 bit drivers and I am using Windows 7 Pro 64 bit. Any fixes?

Boot time is still an issue. It is taking almost three minutes to boot. I have BIOS set to fast boot, no logo, and nothing but AVG set to start with Windows. Any fixes?

On the whole it seems the whole system is sluggish. Virus, malware, and spyware scans come up clean. Very puzzled by this. My girlfriend's dual core notebook is working faster. 

Boot times, I can't help you with, but for your loose audio port, get one of these and connect your speakers to a usb port.

http://www.walmart.com/ip/Manhattan-150859-Hi-Speed-USB-3D-Sound-Adapter/20612338?findingMethod=rr  or

http://www.walmart.com/ip/Syba-USB-2.0-Stereo-Sound-Adapter/14271748?findingMethod=rr

You might give this little utility a go. I have used it on many screwed up systems and it has been a gem on all of them. It has an excellent startup manager and monitors your boot time. It is free:http://www.majorgeeks.com/Kingsoft_PC_Doctor_d7112.html

It is the first thing I install when someone brings there system to me for repair.

Wow. That Kingsoft PC Doctor has the system booting in about a mintue and 20 seconds. Very impressive, thank you. 

I'm still noticing a very big lag time when launching apps. Firefox and iTunes take minutes to start up.

I will also look into those USB sound cards, thanks.

Does anyone screw with services and disable some to improve performance? If so what ones?

If you run the startup optimizer it also does services. It will delay what can be delayed and disable what can be disabled. It is a pretty powerful little gem and does a conservative registry cleaning, temp files etc. This all with the one key optimizer. My daughters laptop was practically unusable with freezing and blue screens and just installing and running PC Doctor solved about 90 % of the problems. My boot time is down to 33 seconds after going through its recommendations. I have been using it for quite a while and it has never screwed up anything. I do the one key optimizer daily to clean up and all is good. Poke around in the program and you will see the services and what it recommends.

Was your system behaving (booting etc.) so sluggishly right from vanilla Windows 7 install?

If so, I would suggest that something is either misconfigured in your BIOS or you're having performance issues with an attached/installed piece of hardware.  

I can say this much for reference.  I run all of my systems as closely to vanilla OS (with all service packs and patches etc.) as possible.  I only install third-party programs when the OS doesn't have an inherent ability to already do what I need.  What I mean by that is, I don't actually customize anything within the OS (yes yes I know Jafo....this IS the windows customize place.....hehe ) and so most of my systems are pretty much like 'consoles' to me.

Having said that (I am not trying to convince you of anything just pointing out my setup for reference), I have systems ranging from the DELL 2005 Inspiron notebook I reference in the "oldest hardware you've installed Win8 on" thread (1.6GHz Pentium M Centrino with 2GB RAM) to full-on gaming rigs (Intel Core 2 Duo's with 16GB RAM etc.) and none of my systems (even while they were still on Windows 7) have ever taken more than 20-30 seconds or so to get to the desktop from a cold boot.  No bootup manager software, no services stopped, no third-party software (certainly not running on startup) and they all boot in around 20 seconds or so.  Once started there are roughly 32 processes running (default Windows install).

Honestly, like I said......if it was always this slow/sluggish from vanilla OS I'd suspect BIOS misconfiguration or other hardware-related issues (sometimes installed hardware can contribute to overall system slowdown etc.).

If it only began showing symptoms like this after you started 'customizing' the OS and installing programs.......well.......you'll have to do some more digging.  The fact that that 'PC Doctor' software sped up the boot time on your system indicates that at the very least you did have some installed software/startup items contributing to system boot-time slowdown.  That may again not be the only contributing factor though if you are still observing overall system sluggishness.

At any rate.....I would never tolerate a boot-time over 30 seconds........that's just me though.....   

just my 2 cents....

Is that every time you run them or just the first time, maybe right "after" boot?  I'm wondering if that's while it's still struggling with the boot.

Could check your registry.

Run- REGEDIT{search box}

HKLM

SOFTWARE

MICROSOFT

WINDOWS

CURRENT VERSION RUN

delete anything you do not want to run at startup! Check path to be sure you do not need. But should be straightforward to do. Might be empty also/ worth a shot.

There was supposed to be a comma between Current Version and run, sorry. Avg is a large program and certainly would slow startup, could open after booted. Also could stop windows search and change indexing options. Do not remember if Seven has superfetch, if so could loose that. Just suggestions. I also use ProcExplor{process explorer], free at snap files.See a better image of what is running during windows to maybe speed up program loading.

why do so many people at Wincustomize prefer to get their software from third-party sites?

seriously, get the stuff from source, at least you can be be sure the third-party site does not put any extra crap into the installer.  http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx

Guys,  if he's been having the slow-boot/sluggishness from day-1 on a fresh Windows install it is not likely to be software/registry/etc. etc. related.   I have never in the many years of owning PC's had a fresh Windows install take longer than about 20 seconds (certainly no longer than 30 secs) to boot to desktop.

I'm averaging around a minute and 30 seconds. You would think it would boot faster being a quad core. It was booting quickly until I added SP1. BIOS settings are fine, most are set at default. 

Every time I run them. Takes forever for them to finally start. Chrome strts very quickly. Firefox and IE take forever, as does iTunes.

Sorry, I don't use regedit. Afraid I will screw something up. Suffice it to say I have everything but AVG turned off to run at startup using MSCONFIG. 

Superfetch is disabled.

Once you're in the 20-30 seconds for boot to desktop realm, CPU speed etc. has nothing to do with anything.  As stated previously, my 1.6GHz Pentium M with a 5400rpm HD booted Windows 7 Pro to the desktop in the same 20-30 seconds that my Core 2 Duo 3.15GHz with SSD does.  I just always run the default(s) for everything and never really change anything in the OS from the fresh install even after I add my data to the system.  Keeps things fast'n snappy throughout I find.

Again, if you were seeing this sluggish performance right from the first boot I'd be looking at hardware issues (or failing driver somewhere).  I seriously doubt any of this has anything to do with the OS itself or what registry entries/startup items/etc. etc. are in use.

Like I said, it was acting fine before SP1. Don't get me wrong, it's a very snappy system, better than my old one bu far, I was just curious if this slow boot time was normal.