Extended boot time after rollback to SP1

[Gary Burton]

I installed SP2 on 2 computers, and both computers had nasty issues. Besides some problems that never got completely defined, both machines had issues with the video cards although there were different cards in each machine. I then uninstalled SP2 on both machines and decided to wait until everybody updates their drivers. One machine works as well as it did before the time-wasting exercise, but the other machine wound up with a much, much longer boot time than it had before.

The boot on the affected machine goes at normal speed until the GUI appears, then it slows down to a crawl while Norton Antivirus, Zone Alarm Pro, and the WinXP wireless drivers load. During this "hang time", there is some disk activity, but not much; so it must be some slow process operating out of ram. I have tried to see what's hanging it up by using a process viewer; but with the cryptic process names and the limited information available, I'm just not smart enough to figure it out.

Once the machine finishes goofing around, it seems to operate at its old speed. I'm not sure about that last statement, however, because the applications I use on that machine are not very demanding.

The SP 2 issues on the affected machine were the video adapter, and problems that I later came to suspect may have been caused by a conflict with Zone Alarm Pro v3.0. This machine uses a Soyo SY-K7ADA v1.0 mother board with an AMD 2000+ processor running at 1.67 GHz. The video card is a Gigabyte AG32S. My wireless connection uses a Linksys transponder connected through USB. I can't think of anything else that might be significant.

Has anyone else had this experience? Does anyone have some suggestions?

 

[Andre Da Costa]

Restart in Safe Mode, defrag and do a disk clean up, remember to disable
your screensaver. Also, empty your temp folder. C: Drive > Documents and
Settings > "Your Username" > Local Settings > Temp (folder).

Click Start > Run > type in: "msconfig" without quotes > startup (tab),
uncheck any unnecessary programs from the listing that might be starting up
with the system.

Andre
_________________________________________________________________
I installed SP2 on 2 computers, and both computers had nasty issues.
Besides some problems that never got completely defined, both machines had
issues with the video cards although there were different cards in each
machine. I then uninstalled SP2 on both machines and decided to wait until
everybody updates their drivers. One machine works as well as it did before
the time-wasting exercise, but the other machine wound up with a much, much
longer boot time than it had before.

The boot on the affected machine goes at normal speed until the GUI
appears, then it slows down to a crawl while Norton Antivirus, Zone Alarm
Pro, and the WinXP wireless drivers load. During this "hang time", there is
some disk activity, but not much; so it must be some slow process operating
out of ram. I have tried to see what's hanging it up by using a process
viewer; but with the cryptic process names and the limited information
available, I'm just not smart enough to figure it out.

Once the machine finishes goofing around, it seems to operate at its old
speed. I'm not sure about that last statement, however, because the
applications I use on that machine are not very demanding.

The SP 2 issues on the affected machine were the video adapter, and
problems that I later came to suspect may have been caused by a conflict
with Zone Alarm Pro v3.0. This machine uses a Soyo SY-K7ADA v1.0 mother
board with an AMD 2000+ processor running at 1.67 GHz. The video card is a
Gigabyte AG32S. My wireless connection uses a Linksys transponder connected
through USB. I can't think of anything else that might be significant.

Has anyone else had this experience? Does anyone have some suggestions?

 

[Gary Burton]

I mentioned the wrong video card. The correct video card in the affected machine is the Diamond Viper 550.
I installed SP2 on 2 computers, and both computers had nasty issues. Besides some problems that never got completely defined, both machines had issues with the video cards although there were different cards in each machine. I then uninstalled SP2 on both machines and decided to wait until everybody updates their drivers. One machine works as well as it did before the time-wasting exercise, but the other machine wound up with a much, much longer boot time than it had before.

The boot on the affected machine goes at normal speed until the GUI appears, then it slows down to a crawl while Norton Antivirus, Zone Alarm Pro, and the WinXP wireless drivers load. During this "hang time", there is some disk activity, but not much; so it must be some slow process operating out of ram. I have tried to see what's hanging it up by using a process viewer; but with the cryptic process names and the limited information available, I'm just not smart enough to figure it out.

Once the machine finishes goofing around, it seems to operate at its old speed. I'm not sure about that last statement, however, because the applications I use on that machine are not very demanding.

The SP 2 issues on the affected machine were the video adapter, and problems that I later came to suspect may have been caused by a conflict with Zone Alarm Pro v3.0. This machine uses a Soyo SY-K7ADA v1.0 mother board with an AMD 2000+ processor running at 1.67 GHz. The video card is a Gigabyte AG32S. My wireless connection uses a Linksys transponder connected through USB. I can't think of anything else that might be significant.

Has anyone else had this experience? Does anyone have some suggestions?

 

[Gary Burton]

I did all of that, and it didn't help, but I appreciate the suggestion
anyway.

 

[Gary Burton]

Since I first posted this, I noticed something that might be
significant:
Most of the delay in startup occurs before either Norton or Zone Alarm
loads. At that time, there is very little disk activity. I think that's
when the problem occurs. Once the disk activity picks up, Norton and Zone
Alarm load at pretty much the same speed as before.

I installed SP2 on 2 computers, and both computers had nasty issues. Besides some problems that never got completely defined, both machines had issues with the video cards although there were different cards in each machine. I then uninstalled SP2 on both machines and decided to wait until everybody updates their drivers. One machine works as well as it did before the time-wasting exercise, but the other machine wound up with a much, much longer boot time than it had before.

The boot on the affected machine goes at normal speed until the GUI appears, then it slows down to a crawl while Norton Antivirus, Zone Alarm Pro, and the WinXP wireless drivers load. During this "hang time", there is some disk activity, but not much; so it must be some slow process operating out of ram. I have tried to see what's hanging it up by using a process viewer; but with the cryptic process names and the limited information available, I'm just not smart enough to figure it out.

Once the machine finishes goofing around, it seems to operate at its old speed. I'm not sure about that last statement, however, because the applications I use on that machine are not very demanding.

The SP 2 issues on the affected machine were the video adapter, and problems that I later came to suspect may have been caused by a conflict with Zone Alarm Pro v3.0. This machine uses a Soyo SY-K7ADA v1.0 mother board with an AMD 2000+ processor running at 1.67 GHz. The video card is a Gigabyte AG32S. My wireless connection uses a Linksys transponder connected through USB. I can't think of anything else that might be significant.

Has anyone else had this experience? Does anyone have some suggestions?

 

[Rock]

Since I first posted this, I noticed something that might be
significant:
Most of the delay in startup occurs before either Norton or Zone Alarm
loads. At that time, there is very little disk activity. I think that's
when the problem occurs. Once the disk activity picks up, Norton and Zone
Alarm load at pretty much the same speed as before.

I installed SP2 on 2 computers, and both computers had nasty issues. Besides some problems that never got completely defined, both machines had issues with the video cards although there were different cards in each machine. I then uninstalled SP2 on both machines and decided to wait until everybody updates their drivers. One machine works as well as it did before the time-wasting exercise, but the other machine wound up with a much, much longer boot time than it had before.

The boot on the affected machine goes at normal speed until the GUI appears, then it slows down to a crawl while Norton Antivirus, Zone Alarm Pro, and the WinXP wireless drivers load. During this "hang time", there is some disk activity, but not much; so it must be some slow process operating out of ram. I have tried to see what's hanging it up by using a process viewer; but with the cryptic process names and the limited information available, I'm just not smart enough to figure it out.

Once the machine finishes goofing around, it seems to operate at its old speed. I'm not sure about that last statement, however, because the applications I use on that machine are not very demanding.

The SP 2 issues on the affected machine were the video adapter, and problems that I later came to suspect may have been caused by a conflict with Zone Alarm Pro v3.0. This machine uses a Soyo SY-K7ADA v1.0 mother board with an AMD 2000+ processor running at 1.67 GHz. The video card is a Gigabyte AG32S. My wireless connection uses a Linksys transponder connected through USB. I can't think of anything else that might be significant.

Has anyone else had this experience? Does anyone have some suggestions?

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

How to perform advanced clean-boot troubleshooting in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=316434