Windows XP stalls for 10mins on startup

[glynjedwards]

Hi all.

I've got a problem the A-team can't even solve!

Ok, I'm currently running Windows WP Professional (SP2) together with an Athlon 2600XP, 128mb Geforce 440MX g/card and 256mb of RAM. Now when I boot up it gets to the welcome page fine then up pops my wallpaper ready for my desktop to appear (icons and all that). However once the background picture appears it stays on that for about 10-15mins and only then does my desktop appear. It kinda springs into life! It's so annoying! My PC works fine after that and shuts down at an acceptable speed.

Now to remedy this I've already formatted my hard drive and performed a clean install twice. I dunno what the answer could be. Is it a windows thing? Is it a hardware conflict (Surely not as it works fine after install)? Is there files missing or settings that need updating?

Also when it's hanging on the background picture, when I go into Task Manager it just says that the system is basically idle so it's not exactly being overloaded with info before the desktop appears either!

I'm really confused on this one and would like to think that there is one person who knows the answer to this or who has experienced the same problem as me! (I've trawled many a page of this forum looking to see if I could find a problem similar and I couldn't so maybe this is a new one on ya?)

Thanks a lot.

[Computer_Commando]

Any USB devices connected?  If, yes, disconnect them.  Computer has a NIC card?  Unplug and see what happens.  Check NIC drivers, you may need to download newer ones.

[glynjedwards]

Hi,

Thanks fr replying. I've not got any USB devices connected no and as for a NIC card. What's one of them? If it's a network card, there's one built in? Is that what you mean?

Thanks.

[Raptor]

NIC = Network Interface Card.

Network Card Help

[Mac]

Many machines made for XP Professional business use come with motherboards that hold 4 x 1024Mb RAM modules and are supplied with at least 1 x 1024Mb module.

So with only 256Mb of RAM I can say, quite definitely, that you are way low on RAM and probably have a huge paging file.

More RAM = less paging file. So I would MAX out your computer's RAM.

512Mb is really a minimum for XP Pro if you are doing anything serious.

A couple of weeks ago I added 256Mb to an XP machine with only 256Mb less 64Mb video inclusive, so only 192Mb.

Now with 448Mb of RAM the computer performs much better, but then it has a slow drive speed ...

Maybe your icon cache is corrupt ... ?

[merlin_2]

maybe you need to disabled some starup services have a look here>http://www.blackviper.com/WIN2K/servicecfg.htm

[Mac]

A couple of things to check if you are running on NTFS. If you have converted from FAT32 you can get 512 byte clusters instead of 4096 byte clusters. This willl slow things down appreciably.

To check this, open a DOS window (in Windows) and type chkdsk, and in the read-out you should see:

"4096 bytes in each allocation unit"

If it says "512 bytes in each allocation unit" then you need to re-format.

If your Master File Table is fragmented this will also slow you down.

Formatting directly to NTFS should prevent this from happening, but if it is fragmented and you have 4096 byte clusters on NTFS then you should use Diskeeper 8 Professional (not Home, the Professional version can be used on XP Home & Professional) and schedule a boot-time defragmentation checking the boxes to run chkdsk and to defragment the MFT.

Hope that is of help.

[Computer_Commando]

Hi,

Thanks fr replying. I've not got any USB devices connected no and as for a NIC card. What's one of them? If it's a network card, there's one built in? Is that what you mean?

Thanks.

Someone else had the same problem as you and it was the built-in network card.  See 2nd post from bottom on this link:  http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,11117610~mode=flat~days=10~start=20