Program Icons (Control Panel)

[Guest]

When we sign off from being online for some time and then click on Control
Panel, we notice that the actual program icons do not show right away.
Instead, 'little white boxes' show, and then in about one second the actual
program icons come on the screen (to replace the 'little white boxes).
Would someone know why this is happening?
We are senior citizens and are concerned that our computer might be going
'bad.' My husband said it might be because another (large) program is trying
to close and the little program icons in the Control Panel have to wait
before the (larger) program closes in order to for those 'little white'
program icons to actually show. Thank you kindly for your answer.
(We have WinXPsp2, which we know is quite large. Ram 512, P4, IE6.)

 

[T. Waters]

Chances are, your husband's theory is closer to the truth. There is some
kind of software hang-up. If you had bad hardware, your symptoms would
probably be a lot more extensive.
If you encountered this problem in the last 2-3 months, you can reset your
computer with System Restore. This is not the drastic "restoration of XP"
done with disks or hidden sectors, but a rather benign resetting of Windows
and your applications to an earlier time. The worst thing that could happen
is that you would see no improvement in your problem and programs you
recently installed are gone and have to be reinstalled.
Start - All Programs - Accessories - System Tools - System Restore
And read about it first in Help and Support.

 

[T. Waters]

Also, have you done a defragmentation of the hard drive and a Disk Cleanup
lately?
Start - Programs - Accessories - System Tools - Defrag or Cleanup