Baffling problem

  • Thread starter Thread starter Mike Chamberlain
  • Start date Start date
M

Mike Chamberlain

WinXP SP2, all updates installed

Hi there.

Yesterday my Sony VAIO laptop developped a strange problem (well, two,
but I think they are related).

1. The laptop now takes much longer to start up (5 minutes longer than
it did two days ago). Just after the Windows loading screen with the
black background and animated bar, and before the GUI starts, it sits on
a black screen, doing seemingly nothing (no hard disk) for about 4-5
minutes. Finally, it will boot into the GUI. I tried with no LAN
plugged in but with similar results.

2. Some programs now seem to take forever to load (two minutes or
more). During this time, there is no CPU, hard disk or network
activity. Programs that take a long time:

Internet Explorer
Visual Studio - even longer than usual ;)
Mozilla Firefox
Mozilla Thunderbird
SQL Server Enterprise Manager
and others

However, some programs still seem to load fine:

Notepad
PCAnywhere
SQL Server Query Analyser
SQL Server Profiler

For instance, I'll log in, wait for everything to load, and then double
click IE three times and Visual Studio once. Nothing will happen for
two minutes or more (no CPU/disk/network), then suddenly, three IEs and
a Visual Studio will load.

I have run anti-virus (Norton) and spyware (Microsoft) checks.

If I boot in safe mode then things seem to work OK.

Anyone got any ideas what might be causing this? Any ideas how to fix
it (without resorting to trial and error device disabling in safe mode)?

Any help is appreciated.

Mike
 
Mike,

Do you remember of installing what programs or changing of any settings
prior to this problem? You might want to run Ad-Adware and Spybot Search and
Destroy (both spyware scanner softwares, search in Google.com for download
link) and try running them. Sometimes MS's spyware scanner program can't
detect some spywares which Ad-Adware and Spybot can find. (P.s: Don't forget
ot update the definition files after downloading and before scanning).

Also try ending task for the processes that you suspect that is causing this
problem (in Normal Mode). (Do this thorugh Task manager - Ctrl+Alt+Del and
click on Processes tab)

Hope this helps.
 
Does it persist if you use System Restore to recover to a point before this
started?
 
Back
Top