Pause during/before desktop, XP Home.. Arrgghhh

[Tom]

I am not signing in with a username and have had this annoying problem with
a 180 second pause everytime I boot windows. My wife on the same internet
connection doesn't have this problem. Things I've done. I have DSL and I use
a software connection manager to log on and log off. I have a dynamic IP
using DHCP. I have used both my Internet Provider connection manager and the
one built into Home Edition.

- used MS visual boot (seems to indicate network delay) no help.
- look at my registry entries for 'run' nothing of note
- change my network startup, in advanced networking
- changed the order of my adapters in advanced networking
- I have used the network bridge, separating 1394 and lan adapter from my
bell PPOE adapter and bell ethernet adapter
- i have tried using some tweaks to disable or circumvent some network
querying to no avail
- use System Mechanic and Registry Mechanic as well as Adaware and Spybot
S&D and

As I said, my wife and I have virtually same machine but she has a nVidia
card(mine ATI) and a DLink network card as opposed to my 3Com card to
connect to the net, i have an Audigy 2, my wife using onboard sound. I
noticed that when I nuked my machine to try and trace when it occurs it just
seems to start out of the blue and be persistant(after install fressh pause
not there). Even more FUNNY is that during this pause, I can hit 'spacebar'
or something and it instantly loads the desktop. If I don't hit any key it
will last the duration of 180 seconds and just show me the "welcome" screen.
If this isn't bizarre.. I don't know. But I have written on MS affiliated
sites and nobody seems to have this problem. I would think it's a networking
issue because of the coincidence of 180 seconds being a network timeout...

Is there nothing I can do to give me more detail as to what is causing this
pause?!? Anyone???

 

[Guest]

I don't understand why you think this is a network problem. You don't say that you're logging onto an offsite XP computer. I take it these are your machines at home. Most common cause of delay during the Welcome screen are problems with the ntuser.dat and other registry files and the pagefile.sys file. To check the ntuser.dat, create a new user and see if logging onto that one is quick. To check pagefile.sys just set XP to run without a pagefile.

 

[Michael P Gabriel]

I am not signing in with a username and have had this annoying problem with
a 180 second pause everytime I boot windows. My wife on the same internet
connection doesn't have this problem. Things I've done. I have DSL and I use
a software connection manager to log on and log off. I have a dynamic IP
using DHCP. I have used both my Internet Provider connection manager and the
one built into Home Edition.

- used MS visual boot (seems to indicate network delay) no help.
- look at my registry entries for 'run' nothing of note
- change my network startup, in advanced networking
- changed the order of my adapters in advanced networking
- I have used the network bridge, separating 1394 and lan adapter from my
bell PPOE adapter and bell ethernet adapter
- i have tried using some tweaks to disable or circumvent some network
querying to no avail
- use System Mechanic and Registry Mechanic as well as Adaware and Spybot
S&D and

<<<<<<<<<<I hope this is not YOUR problem, but I had a 60 second delay
in WIN 98 SE right after the DEL to enter Setup. MSI mobo techs said
to flash my Bios. NOTHING! I bought and installed a new Bios chip -
$30.00.Nothing . Finally had to buy a new motherboard. Now I know why
MSI motherboard tech folks had no explanation for this bizarre
behavior either..