slow logon & desktop load

[Guest]

lately, my winxp login has been very slow. It takes a while for it to finish
"loading
your personal settings".
Right afterwards, it goes to a blank desktop, with the background image (i
use a
blank background), but no start menu or desktop icons. I can move my mouse,
but cannot
bring up the task manager or right click.
Finally, after about 6 or 7 minutes, i hear the intro sound and everything
comes
up.

Here are the things i've tried:

cleaning out the prefetch folder C:\Windows\Prefetch
checking for viruses/spyware/adware,
checking the event log
using msconfig to disable startup programs
....
all of which had no effect on my problem.

how can i fix this??

 

[Larry Gardner]

You can set the User Debug mode key and review the output log.

 

[Larry Gardner]

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon

Set/Create UserEnvDebugLevel DWORD 30002
reboot


The output goes to: C:\WINDOWS\Debug\UserMode\userenv.log

Remember to turn it off by setting to 0

 

[Guest]

One good idea is to go to www.sysinternals.com and download a tool called
autoruns... It is basically like msconfig but on steriods it will show any
files that start when you computer does it will also show files that are
trying to start at startup and that maybe missing or corrupt. This could
hopefully help slowdown the start up process. Does it take this long in safe
mode ?

 

[engineer2001]

I'm having the same exact problem with my mom and dad's computer I
built for them about 4 months ago. Last week (after downloading and
installing the "Genuine Advantage" tool, they now get incredibly slow
logins - with the "applying personalized settings" notification beside
their login icon (welcome page) showing for at least a full minute,
then the desktop with no icons and no taskbar showing for abother 5-6
mins before the icons and taskbar finally appear.

I tried a repair install - no fix. I tried FORMATTING and reinstalling
XP Pro w/SP2 - fix, until I downloaded the updates from Windows Update.
Now, same problem again.

I followed the advice above and downloaded the "autoruns" utility
(which is very nice, BTW), and I disabled everything that normally
loads at logon (everything below the Shell/explorer.exe entry on the
"Logon" tab). Now, it just boots to a BLACK SCREEN and I never see the
welcome page at all.

This situation just keeps getting worse.

 

[engineer2001]

It's still doing it. It boots to a black screen for about 3-4 minutes,
then the logon/welcome screen shows, then when I click on the icon for
my username, it shows "Applying your personal settings" or whatever for
1 or 2 full minutes, then shows a black screen for another 4-5 minutes.
Finally, the destop wallpaper is shown with no taskbar and no icons.

I can hit ctrl-alt-del and get the task manager at this point, and
everything looks fine. System Idle Process is using 99%, and the CPU
is idle. It sits like this for a good 5 minutes or more before the
icons and taskbar pop up, and the system works normally from that point
on.

If you search for "XP logon black screen" on here, you get 13,000 hits,
with many of them this same problem. Is this some kind of worm/virus
or bug in a Microsoft update? Why do we all have this problem?

I have tried a repair install - no fix. Formatting the computer and
reinstalling XP SP2 - fixed, but then I downloaded the microsoft
windows updates and installed my McAfee Virus Scan Enterprise 8.0i
again, and it was back to the problem again. The virus scan says I
have no viruses, Spybot says I have no ads/trojans or spyware, and
everything runs fine as long as I don't reboot. If I reboot, I need a
good 15 minutes before I can use my system.

Anybody have any idea what I can do? Thanks in advance.

 

[engineer2001]

Nevermind - I'll start a new thread. I tagged onton this one because I
was having the same problem. Sorry, I'm a Google group noob. I just
saw that this thread is an "old" one that doesn't even display on the
main page. der!