XP pro slow bootup and operation.

[Patrick Casher]

My son has a desktop PIII on a wireless router they use for the internet and
for the children to play games with. I'm sure it's been abused. It takes
about 5 min to be able to access the start menu. The boot screen comes on
and after a minute the keyboard lights flash and it proceeds to slowly boot
up. There doesn't appear to be too many fonts in explorer or word. I tried
doing a restore going back as far as I could and it didn't help. Ran
ad-aware, emptied trash bin, deleted cookies and internet files, ran disk
cleanup and left it doing a defrag. I'm afraid I might have to reload XP.
Any ideas would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Patrick

The following replys were from 24hoursupport.helpdesk:

You probrably have a virus or trojan.

In addition to ad-aware try to run spybot - it is free.
Also: download stinger from NAI - scans your system for trojans.

HTH

They run AVG freeware I should run a scan. I've added the hosts file and
restricted zone domains but I know it might be after the fact. Does anyone
in this group have any input? Thanks in advance.

Patrick

Stinger is NOT a cure-all. It is not really for Trojans. It is McAfee's
Internet worm
removal tool. There are a couple of Trojans that stinger covers only
because they
co-exist/cooperate with certain worms covered by Stinger. Stinger ONLY
covers ~39 infectors
and their variants of the 83K+ known infectors.

Please go to McAfee (http://www.mcafee.com/myapps/mfs/default.asp) and/or
Trend
(http://housecall.antivirus.com ) and perform an online scan of your
platform then report
back your results.

Based upon those results, we can go on from there.

Dave

I was overthere today for a couple of hours. I fired up Free Scan but it
only got up to 31,000 files left it running. I'll check back with them
tomorrow.

Patrick

Called son this am he said virus scan finished nothing found. Planning to
go there this afternoon and run RbKiller, CWShredder, and an updated
Ad-Aware.

Patrick

RbKiller and CWShredder found nothing. Ad-Aware found 9 items, deleted them.
Noticed firewall Zonealarm not running tried to start it but it would pop up
then dissapear. I downloaded the latest version and reinstalled.
Dounloaded the latest AVG update and started it running. Left and will call
them back for the results.

Patrick

Son called back scan ran error free. I'm running out of ideas. Maybe I'll
run hijackthis and send in the log. Does anyone have any further
suggestions?

Thanks,
Patrick

Got this tip from their webmaster while waiting for reply on hijackthis log
will check it
out

on next visit.

Patrick:

Member


Group: Full Member
Posts: 52
Member No.: 3,012
Joined: 14-April 03



Hi Patrick Casher-
You might try this.. go to Blackvipers site here and read up on XP's
services. Just make sure that you FOLLOW ALL INSTRUCTIONS as he lay's them
out for you to (playing around with services can cause problems) I am not an
expert on Hijack this logs, so please wait for one to reply as per your log.
It looks clean to me.

Hijackthis log came back clean. Planning to get back to son's and run
stinger, updated ad-aware, and checkout services. Anyone have any other
ideas?


Ran updated ad-aware, checkedout services both ok. Removed MS patch
Q811493 which was supposed to be causing problems in the past according
to the web but it didn't help. Tried removing anti virus program AVG but
no change. Started running Stinger and asked son to check on it later.
Called
him back next day and he didn't see result window. Plan to run it again.
If runs
clean plan to reload format and reload XP.

Patrick

 

[Cameron Stanley]

Goto start and run and type msconfig hit enter and
choose selective startup and then take the check out of
the box that says load startup items click apply and
then click close Then reboot and see if this
helps.....If not do diagnostic start up and check
harddrive for bad sectors This could also be the
cause.....

Cameron S

-----Original Message-----
My son has a desktop PIII on a wireless router they use for the internet and
for the children to play games with. I'm sure it's been abused. It takes
about 5 min to be able to access the start menu. The boot screen comes on
and after a minute the keyboard lights flash and it proceeds to slowly boot
up. There doesn't appear to be too many fonts in explorer or word. I tried
doing a restore going back as far as I could and it didn't help. Ran
ad-aware, emptied trash bin, deleted cookies and internet files, ran disk
cleanup and left it doing a defrag. I'm afraid I might have to reload XP.
Any ideas would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Patrick

The following replys were from 24hoursupport.helpdesk:

You probrably have a virus or trojan.

In addition to ad-aware try to run spybot - it is free.
Also: download stinger from NAI - scans your system for trojans.

HTH

They run AVG freeware I should run a scan. I've added the hosts file and
restricted zone domains but I know it might be after the fact. Does anyone
in this group have any input? Thanks in advance.

Patrick

Stinger is NOT a cure-all. It is not really for Trojans. It is McAfee's
Internet worm
removal tool. There are a couple of Trojans that stinger covers only
because they
co-exist/cooperate with certain worms covered by Stinger. Stinger ONLY
covers ~39 infectors
and their variants of the 83K+ known infectors.

Please go to McAfee

(http://www.mcafee.com/myapps/mfs/default.asp) and/or

 

[Patrick Casher]

Thanks, I'll give it a try on next visit.

Patrick

 

[roger]

Hi Patrick,

Have you checked that you don't have malware installed using Ad-aware
and Spybot?

See the following articles:

308041 Resources for Troubleshooting Startup Problems in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=308041

310353 How to Perform a Clean Boot in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=310353

316434 HOW TO: Perform Advanced Clean-Boot Troubleshooting in Windows
XP
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=316434

310560 How to Troubleshoot By Using the Msconfig Utility in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=310560

The msconfig utility is especially useful, as it lets you disable any
programs that run automatically at start up. You could try disabling
all non- windows programs here and testing the boot velocity, then
enable them one or two at a time to find out which causes the slow
boot.

Hope this helps.

 

[Patrick Casher]

I reloaded XP today and found that there must be a hardware problem as it
took about 3hrs to format the 20gig hd. I'm suspecting the drive itself or
the motherboard. I'll try and swap the hd out on Fri.

Patrick

 

[Patrick Casher]

Wondering if there's a boot sector virus. Noticed a strange 8 meg partition
appearing when repartitioning. Maybe I'll try a low level format before
replacing hd.

Patrick

 

[Patrick Casher]

Tried to low level format but couldn't find lowlevel format on Maxtor's
Maxblast 3, so did their repartition and quick format and started reload of
XP pro but when it became apparent it was running slow I replaced the hd and
reloaded seems to have done the trick. Will go back and check the
partitions with fdisk next week, didn't have time today. Gets to a usable
start menu in less than a minute.

Patrick

 

[Patrick Casher]

Had an opportunity to run fdisk on the replaced drive and found no 8 meg
partition.

Patrick