XP Firewall starting late

[Guest]

My daughter has a Dell laptop e/w XP Home, SP2, and all of the latest
updates. She frequently gets the bubble (at start up) that tells her that
her Windows Firewall has not started. This bubble eventually goes away. I
have seen this. I checked the control panel/security (after the bubble
disappears). The firewall shows as on and it is the Windows Firewall.

It is like the firewall is starting late.

Why is the fireall starting late?

 

[JS]

You probably have a large number of programs that load (some are not visible
and run in the background) during startup.
If you want to did deeper:
Try Autoruns from the MS Windows SysInternals site:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/ProcessesAndThreads/Autoruns.mspx

AutoRuns will show/list all apps/etc. that load/run when you first boot
(Boot Execute tab),
when you logon (Logon tab) and other programs that load (grouped by labeled
tabs) for easy viewing.

It also provides the ability to selectively allows you to stop (use with
care) any program that you don't want to load. You can undo any changes you
have made.

Note: To get additional details on an item in the list you may need to
highlight the item (right click) and use the 'Search Online' option to get
the details, especially useful for the more obscure items in the list.

JS