My machine is homebrew, with 2.67 gig P4, Gig of mem, 128 meg 8x video, etc. The machine has always booted from cold off to the Win xp pro desktop in less than 35 seconds
Well, one day I noticed that animations were no longer playing on internet pages (I use IE6, animations turned on). I couldn't figure out why the animations were not playing, so I falsely assumed a problem with IE6 OR Winxp, so I re-loaded SP1a (dumb idea, I know) thinking that might fix the problem. Guess what.....that reloading of SP1A has now caused a delay of 1 minute and 40 seconds from turn-on until I get to the desktop icons. Same symptoms as many of you are posting. By the way, it turns out that the reason that animations were not working on web pages was that I (yes I) had turned off animations in ZONE ALARM and had forgotten all about it. So, the fix was simple, however now I can't get the delay out of the boot up sequence. I have reloaded winxp and sp1a and have applied all of the critical updates. No help.

In the event log, the only error I am getting now is with Workstation Services. I cannot start this service, I get a message like
Event Type: Erro
Event Source: Service Control Manage
Event Category: Non
Event ID: 702
Date: 3/15/200
Time: 5:13:59 P
User: N/
Computer: USER-xxxxxxxxxxxx
Description
The Workstation service terminated with the following error:
The specified module could not be found.

I cant even start Workstation Services manually. Can anyone help with either of these two issues, probably related
Tnx
Joe (sorry for the long winded post

Joe wrote:
> My machine is homebrew, with 2.67 gig P4, Gig of mem, 128 meg 8x
> video, etc. The machine has always booted from cold off to the Win
> xp pro desktop in less than 35 seconds.
> Well, one day I noticed that animations were no longer playing on
> internet pages (I use IE6, animations turned on). I couldn't figure
> out why the animations were not playing, so I falsely assumed a
> problem with IE6 OR Winxp, so I re-loaded SP1a (dumb idea, I know)
> thinking that might fix the problem. Guess what.....that reloading
> of SP1A has now caused a delay of 1 minute and 40 seconds from
> turn-on until I get to the desktop icons. Same symptoms as many of
> you are posting. By the way, it turns out that the reason that
> animations were not working on web pages was that I (yes I) had
> turned off animations in ZONE ALARM and had forgotten all about it.
> So, the fix was simple, however now I can't get the delay out of the
> boot up sequence. I have reloaded winxp and sp1a and have applied
> all of the critical updates. No help.
>
> In the event log, the only error I am getting now is with Workstation
> Services. I cannot start this service, I get a message like :
> Event Type: Error
> Event Source: Service Control Manager
> Event Category: None
> Event ID: 7023
> Date: 3/15/2004
> Time: 5:13:59 PM
> User: N/A
> Computer: USER-xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Description:
> The Workstation service terminated with the following error:
> The specified module could not be found.
>
> I cant even start Workstation Services manually. Can anyone help
> with either of these two issues, probably related?
> Tnx,
> Joe (sorry for the long winded post)

Start from a command prompt, type:sfc[space]scannow...[enter]. System
file checker will replace missing or corrupt system files and possibly
fix whatever is ailing, from my experience. I have seen this type of
boot delay from a failing ethernet cable as the network tries,
apparently, to negotiate a connection. If there is no improvement, then
deinstall ZA. I no longer use ZA simply because of problems like this
in Win98SE. Disabling ZA does not resolve its problems if it is the
source, IMO.

Otherwise, a repair install after reseating all boards and RAM, making
sure all HD cables are connected tightly.

Q

Thanks for the info, but unfortunately have already done all of that. Zone Alarm is not causing the problem...I've uninstalled and reinstalled it twice. The network cable and adapter are fine

This started right after I loaded SP1a on this computer which already had SP1a installed, along with all of the SP2 critical updates. So, I overwrote some newer files with some older stuff and the problem began
The question is....what did a re-install of SP1a do to cause this startup delay? Like I said in the post, the Workstation Service cannot be initiated. This condition keeps showing up in the event log as an error.
How can I get the Workstation Services started
Thanks
Joe