Computer freezes during startup

[Stacey]

Yesterday my computer with XP (home edition version 2002)
worked fine, but fairly slowly. The computer has a
Celeron 735 MHz processor and yesterday it had 128 MB of
RAM. I brought the memory down to Best Buy to make sure I
got the right type of RAM and was advised to put in 2 258
MBs. Which I did. It now runs very fast, but when I shut
down and restart, I get to the window that says Microsoft
XP, but the window is not bright and nothing happens. (If
I simply restart rather than shut down and restart, there
is no problem). From the computer being off, I can start
in safe mode and if I restart from there, things work. I
don't want to have to go through safe mode every time I
start up. What is going on? How do I fix it?

 

[Guest]

Stacey,
I'm not sure if this is your problem, but check to
see how many programs you have that are set to run at
startup. Example MSN Messenger, AOL Messenger, IE Netscape
etc. There are probably several you can set to only run
after you select them.

Two sources I found helpful are Pacs Portal and
Answersthatwork. You should use a startup manager and
evaluate each program one your needs. But there are so
many programs out that you may not find some startup
programs listed.

Another cause for slow startups are Services running
on Auto that could be on manual or stopped completely
(messenger, not MSN). An excellent site for information is
call BlackViper and check for XP Services.
He recommend only using the cmd services.msc to make any
changes.

Be careful, you do want your anti virus program and
firewall to run at startup. In fact update your anti virus
software and do a complete scan before doing anything else.
There are other programs only you can make the decision
about, just be careful, with safe mode in most instances
you can go in and undo.

The last thing that will help in startup speed is to
delete the cache and old programs you downloaded but do
not use now. And of course defragment your HD. I defrag
every week and once a month defrag in safe mode.

These changes will take you some time.

One last item that may save a few seconds on your boot
time is a program from Microsoft called bootvis. You can
find it in the MS downloads. I run the first two Run and
Run with driver delay. Since I do not use Hibernate I pass
on that one.

*ALWAYS* update your virus program and check for
problems. Know your source when downloading, and again
**ALWAYS** scan downloaded programs, images, etc, before
opening them. My download program does it automatically.

I had to reinstall XP and only went to 3 sites
Symantec, Zone Labs, and Microsft Updates and found that
the one of the worms got into my system thru an
unprotected port (I took my firewall down prior to running
the XP InplaceUpgrade in order to activate online).

Good Luck
Uncle Doug