Slow desktop loading help please

[pompeyrodney]

Can anyone help me to find out why my PC gets to the XP pro screen and sits there for ages before I get the desktop. The hard drive light is flashing regularly on and off for a set time which I have not seen before. The drive is a new Maxtor 80 Gig and another drive did the same thing as well. The system is a Athlon XP1800 with 512 Ram. Many thanks in advance.

 

[Ian]

You probably have lots of spyware on your PC by the sounds of it. Try downloading AdAware, its a free application that is great at getting rid of it (and free, best of all).

Try searching the site for some tips on using it

 

[muckshifter]

An 'unplugged' network card can give you similar 'problem'.

download, update & run Ad-aware & SpywareBlaster from my sig ... how to configure Ad-aware

 

[pompeyrodney]

Thanks Muckshifter and Ian, but I am already a devotee of Adaware. I have just run it again and only found three tracking cookies. I timed my boot this evening and it sat on the Windows XP screen for 4 mins 15 secs before I got the desktop loading. This then took a further 2 minutes.

 

[muckshifter]

I just read your "intro" Rodney, so forgive us if we stated the obvious ... try Start, Run, and paste the following line into the window...
Rundll32.exe advapi32.dll,ProcessIdleTasks

... this will take about 10-15 minutes to complete. This is the core of the Bootvis.exe optomization tool, and you can call it directly or schedule it. Microsoft no longer offers it for download.

 

[Ian]

Rundll32.exe advapi32.dll,ProcessIdleTasks

... this will take about 10-15 minutes to complete. This is the core of the Bootvis.exe optomization tool, and you can call it directly or schedule it. Microsoft no longer offers it for download.

Sorry for butting in, but what does this do (I've never used this before).

 

[muckshifter]

BootVis.exe was a performance trace visualization tool for use with XP ... it can show you what's happening during your Windows XP boot ... however, people thought it was a "boot enhancer" thinking it would boot their system quicker, it did/does not.

MS took it off their site.

 

[Ian]

BootVis.exe was a performance trace visualization tool for use with XP ... it can show you what's happening during your Windows XP boot ... however, people thought it was a "boot enhancer" thinking it would boot their system quicker, it did/does not.

MS took it off their site.

Excellent, I'll have to give this a whirl! Could be very handy in finding problems.

 

[pompeyrodney]

BootVis.exe was a performance trace visualization tool for use with XP ... it can show you what's happening during your Windows XP boot ... however, people thought it was a "boot enhancer" thinking it would boot their system quicker, it did/does not.

MS took it off their site.

Hi All
I already have the bootvis tool installed and have run it with no obvious improvement in boot time. Muckshifter I have tried your run command "Rundll32.exe advapi32.dll,ProcessIdleTasks", I get an egg timer that lasts for about 8 seconds but nothing else appears on screen. What is actually supposed to be happening that should last for 10-15 minutes. I am inclined to thiink my problem is more related to hardware due to the hard drive activity light cycling on and off for regular periods during the boot process. Are there any other diagnostic tools available to help me please people

 

[muckshifter]

Well if you have the BootVis tool that will only give you an idea to what is happening at boot-time ... it WILL NOT 'improve' anything.

Have you tried another drive ... oh, you have ... what cables is it using? 80 wire? It’s not one of those "cable select" cables ... they have a hole in the cable at the MB end.

Nothing is on slave and disconnect anything on secondary.

See if booting from secondary makes any difference.

Oh, and what is the MB?

 

[pompeyrodney]

hi Muckshifter
I am using an 80 wire cable connected to a Gigabyte GA7 DXR+ Motherboard. The drives connected to the MB sre both set to cable select at present and I have multiple drives connected up so I will do as you advise this evening and let you know the result. Thanks for your help mate.

 

[muckshifter]

On a Comcrap, Crapard bell or Hewlet Crapard you may find you have to use "cable select" just to get the dam things to work ... but I never use it, I always set-up using the HD jumpers as Master and Slave.

Just connect the master as master and see if it does improve.

Also, I'm not adverse to connecting two HDs to the same IDE ... most Cases Deem it so, and the CD roms are on the secondary IDE ... it really will not matter with todays drives.

 

[pompeyrodney]

Hi Muckshifter

Just found my problem, it would appear that I had a dodgy drive connected to IDE 3. I should have guessed it was one of the drives as I have five of them connected to my system. I thought something was up when I ran Norton Utilities as it was telling me one drives partition table was irreparably damaged. Took that one out and lo and behold it rebooted in no time at all. Many thanks for your help.

 

[muckshifter]

Jolly good show old bean ...

Glad you got it sorted.

 

[pompeyrodney]

Hi Muckshifter

Can you please tell me where you got your animated Avatar from as I cannot seem to find any downloadble ones anywhere. Cheers mate.

 

[muckshifter]

Here you go ... but leave my 'rattler' alone.

http://www.animationfactory.com/

 

[pompeyrodney]

Cheers me old Mucker

 

[RadioJAk]

I saw the same problem on a computer I was working on, it was the online backup program (sorry can't remember the name of it) It puts an icon in my computer for the online drive and just as windows gets to the desktop it decides it has to connect to that online drive no matter what,... while its's doing this everything else gets put on hold, But once it connects everything finishs loading and the computer runs normal.
does that help you?