Is 293 startup items unusual?

[derail43]

Recently I was seeing my PC getting slower, so I started using autoruns to see how many things were automatically starting up when I turned it on. I was surprised to see that according to autoruns there were 293 things starting up.
That's under the "Everything" tab so it includes everything, services, drivers, update checkers, the whole ball of wax. Is that normal?

Win 7 64, AMD quad 3.2 gig, 8G RAM

 

[smeezekitty]

I looked into it and it includes device drivers so I wouldn't be surprised to see a very high number.

 

[Zenkor]

Do you have an SSD?

 

[ssddx]

do you have an antivirus? have you done a scan recently?

are you having any other issues besides a slowdown?

293 autoruns does sound excessive even with drivers but then again i dont have much of a basis to compare to since i havent ran autoruns myself.

how many of those autoruns are programs?

 

[derail43]

Thanks, guys.
No, I don't have an SSD
I use Avast antivirus and keep it up to date. It's been some time since I did a scan.
I don't have any programs set to start at startup. Some of the items are exe's but they seem to be support for other things such as antivirus, printer, etc.

 

[ssddx]

do a virus scan to be sure. some virus & worms multiply and slow down systems.

a failing hard drive can also act slow but there are also some other symptoms like instability

just some ideas...

not saying its a hardware failure though.

 

[derail43]

Thanks ssddx. I'll scan sometime today and re-post.

All - I'd still like to know if 293 start up items is unusual?

 

[smeezekitty]

I cannot figure out how to get a count from autoruns

 

[derail43]

Thanks smeezekitty -
Neither could I. I did it the hard way, by counting the checked boxes under the "Everything" tab. It really didn't take too long.

Also, sorry it took me awhile to get back. I ran a full system Avast scan and it didn't find any problems.

Derail

 

[ssddx]

are you sure that it isnt a hard drive problem?

 

[derail43]

I did defrag the HD and it has plenty of free space. In nine years taking care of PC's and networks at an industrial plant here I don't remember ever having a HD cause slowdowns for any other reason. You are right, that is something to check and I appreciate your mentioning it. Do you know of any other HD issues?

Thanks!

 

[smeezekitty]

I have had dieing harddrives run very very slowly as it has to retry several times. But I doubt that is it.

 

[ssddx]

well... every single time before my 1.5tb drives died on me they had serious slowdown for about a week or more.

then i started getting some freeze ups and blue screens.

honestly its worth looking into but i wouldnt focus all of your attention on that.

if your pc just started getting slow recently... like all of a sudden.... then perhaps try system restore to back before there was a problem. it could be something you installed bogging the system down.

i've already had to do that before too..

just naming a few options

 

[smeezekitty]

Although I recommend backing up anything important just in case.