M
mr know it all
Hello, we have xp with sp1 and the rollups but we messed it up. It's
an old machine (Asus P5A, 550Mhz, 320M mem, 10G 7200 rpm drive at
DMA2) so I set it up for Classic Menu and set the My
Computer\Performance\Visual Effects to Adjust for Best Performance. It
had the handsome, plain blue desktop and no pop-up balloons, no
scheduled tasks or messenger problems etc. It performed ok for
checking email and daily tasks. But,..
My friend, who has an indominable will and can't leave well enough
alone wants to customize the desktop to display a scanned piece of
art. She also wanted to remove all the desktop icons and move them
into the task bar at the bottom of the screen, which she did by
herself. The task bar is also supposed to disappear until you move the
mouse over it. I don't know how she did all of this and she can't
remember. It was done by an IT professional, who can no longer be
reached, a man who flew in and has now flown away, leaving a trail of
careless destruction in his wake. It all went ok except that now at
boot time:
Windows boots fine, automatically logs on in a blink, posts her fine
art over the blue desktop. Two windows pop up too fast to read, I
think one says "loading personal settings". The tool bar and icons
appear at the bottom of the screen over the art about 10 seconds
later. The whole boot takes about 60 seconds. Real good time for an
old clunker. But,..
And here is where the agony begins- about 10 seconds later an hour
glass appears by the mouse pointer and 60 dull seconds go by then the
Artwork disappears and is replaced by the Blue Classic Desktop and the
tool tray thing folds down out of view smoothly, now,.. a tiny icon
appears in the upper left hand corner of the screen. I don't know what
it indicates. An infinately tiny square with kind of a checkerboard of
six smaller squares, red white and blue. Part of IE, I think. This is
where another copy of the tool tray or task bar or whatever it's
called used to be. One instance across the top of the screen and one
at the bottom. No, I don't know why someone would do this. But then
they changed their mind, you see, and did something to remove the top
task bar and the tiny square and goofy boot up is some type of residue
from this incorrect removal I suppose.
Also, and this saddens me; gone is the crisp and spritely performance
I was so pleased with. The whole thing now stumbles around like a
drunk. The pull downs are slow, disk access takes minutes instead of
seconds. I found a virus in the Cntrl-Alt-Del task manager thing
called xpmonsys and got rid of it a few days ago by ending the process
and removing it from the drive and registry. Then I ran Spysoldier or
something which got rid of 5 spy things. I installed AVG antivirus,
updated the database and scanned the system which blue screened half
way through the process, sighting ppscan.sys as the culprit. A driver
from a scanner that hasn't been part of the system for 2 years. I
removed it. An 11 year old used the computer for an hour and AVG went
wild citing 7 new instances of viri which none of us could find in
something called the vault. I ran the virus scan which blue screened
xp again. I uninstalled AVG and now I am appealing to you, the
technical expert, for guidance. I ran msconfig and clicked make
ntbtlog.txt but it just shows the drivers that load. Is there
something to show what loads under personal settings or a utilities to
edit the process? Thanks for your time. Mr. K.
an old machine (Asus P5A, 550Mhz, 320M mem, 10G 7200 rpm drive at
DMA2) so I set it up for Classic Menu and set the My
Computer\Performance\Visual Effects to Adjust for Best Performance. It
had the handsome, plain blue desktop and no pop-up balloons, no
scheduled tasks or messenger problems etc. It performed ok for
checking email and daily tasks. But,..
My friend, who has an indominable will and can't leave well enough
alone wants to customize the desktop to display a scanned piece of
art. She also wanted to remove all the desktop icons and move them
into the task bar at the bottom of the screen, which she did by
herself. The task bar is also supposed to disappear until you move the
mouse over it. I don't know how she did all of this and she can't
remember. It was done by an IT professional, who can no longer be
reached, a man who flew in and has now flown away, leaving a trail of
careless destruction in his wake. It all went ok except that now at
boot time:
Windows boots fine, automatically logs on in a blink, posts her fine
art over the blue desktop. Two windows pop up too fast to read, I
think one says "loading personal settings". The tool bar and icons
appear at the bottom of the screen over the art about 10 seconds
later. The whole boot takes about 60 seconds. Real good time for an
old clunker. But,..
And here is where the agony begins- about 10 seconds later an hour
glass appears by the mouse pointer and 60 dull seconds go by then the
Artwork disappears and is replaced by the Blue Classic Desktop and the
tool tray thing folds down out of view smoothly, now,.. a tiny icon
appears in the upper left hand corner of the screen. I don't know what
it indicates. An infinately tiny square with kind of a checkerboard of
six smaller squares, red white and blue. Part of IE, I think. This is
where another copy of the tool tray or task bar or whatever it's
called used to be. One instance across the top of the screen and one
at the bottom. No, I don't know why someone would do this. But then
they changed their mind, you see, and did something to remove the top
task bar and the tiny square and goofy boot up is some type of residue
from this incorrect removal I suppose.
Also, and this saddens me; gone is the crisp and spritely performance
I was so pleased with. The whole thing now stumbles around like a
drunk. The pull downs are slow, disk access takes minutes instead of
seconds. I found a virus in the Cntrl-Alt-Del task manager thing
called xpmonsys and got rid of it a few days ago by ending the process
and removing it from the drive and registry. Then I ran Spysoldier or
something which got rid of 5 spy things. I installed AVG antivirus,
updated the database and scanned the system which blue screened half
way through the process, sighting ppscan.sys as the culprit. A driver
from a scanner that hasn't been part of the system for 2 years. I
removed it. An 11 year old used the computer for an hour and AVG went
wild citing 7 new instances of viri which none of us could find in
something called the vault. I ran the virus scan which blue screened
xp again. I uninstalled AVG and now I am appealing to you, the
technical expert, for guidance. I ran msconfig and clicked make
ntbtlog.txt but it just shows the drivers that load. Is there
something to show what loads under personal settings or a utilities to
edit the process? Thanks for your time. Mr. K.