Unusual Win XP Startup Problem

[Lyris]

This is a weird one, I've had it for about a week now.

Whenever I start my PC, it boots extremely quickly. Once into Windows and onto the desktop, I can run any program related to Explorer.exe (like My Computer, that Image Viewer thing) without any problems. Even although the hard drive is not accessing, it won't run anything else (even pressing CTRL+ALT+DEL won't bring up the Task Manager). So I usually sit there clicking program icons for awhile, then a few minutes later, it bursts into life and everything starts.

I have run msconfig and disabled almost everything that's entirely necessary, and there doesn't seem to be anything strange in there.

Does anyone have any clue what's going on? I'm using Win XP Pro SP1, with a Pentium 4 2.8ghz and 1gb of RAM.

[marcus]

Windows XP boots fast for me also, I think a lot of it is just so that MS can say that XP is the fastest booting OS of them all, even if you cant actually use it at the point you see the desktop. Wait until background processes kick off before you can realistically use it, mine sits like that for about 10 seconds or so, my spec P4 2.6Ghz. Certainly not 2 mins though.

Are you on a network? Might be profile related perhaps. What happens when you boot in Safe Mode?

[demon9k]

I get the same problem if the other computer on my home network is shutting down or switching on at the same time. Other than that though its fine.

[Lyris]

I am on a home network, and I've tried booting in Safe Mode with Networking enabled and disabled - the problem doesn't happen on either of these but does in standard Windows.

[Ginger Tosser]

After boot up startup taskmanager ( by right clicking on the program bar) and check if there are any processes running with high cpu usage. Anti Virus programs tend to break PC's on boot up, so if you have one it may be worth reinstalling it.

Also disable to themes service as a temporary measure (means your desktop will lose the teletubbies look). I've been working on 3ghz PC's lately with ****e performance and stopping this service has improved them.

[nips]

I had that problem, and I'm sure someone else on this forum did also!

Nothing really works for a minute or so then it's ok!

Well the most recent time that happened I just downloaded SP1 and it solved the problem .

Before that (ages ago now) I just left it and it fixed itself after about a month!

I can't remember what the other bloke did to fix the problem though! ft:

[Sam Cory]

run msconfig

choose selective startup, deselect System.ini, Win.ini and Startup Items.

this should take quite a few problems out the equation. Should also disable software
firewalls and virus apps.

GL

[Tom Salter]

Problem with WindowsXP is that it launches the GUI before the services are running.

To solve this problem, format and install Windows 2000. By far M$'s best O/S to date.

[mid]

I had this problem too for a long while. Traced it to the network card. I had a network card installed, drivers done right and everything. But when the machine wasn't on the network you couldn't do anything useful for 60 seconds after the logon startup stuff had appeared to finish. I think the network card was trying to speak to the non-existent network, to log itself onto the local workgroup. Until it had finished timing out because there wasn't anything there, I had to wait.

Since I had no network at the time, I just removed the card and everything was hunky dory. Now I've got a network again, but the hub is reasonably quick to reply, and so waiting isn't quite so bad. So while I can't help I can point out that this seems to be fairly natural.

[Super Stu]

98 does the very same thing Mid, except at a different point (when the animating 98 logo is up). Traced that one to a network card too.

The annoying thing about this XP problem, which I've had too, is that nothing seems to have high CPU load when it occurs (either the system idle process has it or the cpu shutdown applet is on 99%, meaning no load to owt else). I find if it's suddenly happening, you've added something which has altered the sequence of things which load at startup. I seem to recall my belkin wlan card doing this, for example.

To get round it, there's an app (which I forget the name of) that reboots the machine, has a butchers to establish the optimum way to load all your drivers, systray thingies etc and then configures it all on next boot.

Shaves a fair old time off startup tbh.

[Lyris]

Thanks for the replies everyone, it seems to be fixed now after I disabled all of the startup items and one-by-one re-enabled most of them. Strange...

[Commander Marklar]

It's halting because of the blocking nature of the call; the actual process waiting for the response won't be hogging CPU because execution has passed to something else (probably hardware). It is network related, probably best to not run additional 'services' unless they're absolutely needed.

It could be something specific to your ethernet hardware, maybe something configurable via device manager? My first guess would be a "go to the host to automatically detect network config." kind of setting.

Can't say I've ever had this problem though, other than a persistent share being accessed during GUI load [when the server has since gone].

[Lyris]

The problem actually isn't gone, in fact if anything it's worse than ever. I'd rather not mess around with network stuff too much because that's always given me bad luck before, I'll probably just reinstall Windows.

[Commander Jameson]

I had this exact same problem. I had to disable/delete my network bridges. That seemed to work OK.

CJ

[FelixofMars]

Hmmmm, next you'll be telling me to install Windows ME.

To solve this problem, format and install Windows 2000. By far M$'s best O/S to date.