Long pause on start up - why?

[Guest]

Just to put things in perspective, by 'long' I mean about 1½ minutes, so this
is not a matter of life or death. I have XP Pro on my laptop, so when
starting the machine I am not always in a situation when I can go and make a
cup of coffee while it puts its boots on one at a time. And it didn't used to
do this, so I wonder what has changed.

This is what I observe. The boot goes exactly as expected up to the blue
'welcome' screen and the rinky-dinky start-up tune, then the wallpaper
appears, and then ... nothing. It just sits there, silently with apparently
no activity on the hard disk. This goes on for about a minute and then there
is a flicker of life from the hard disk, which then gradually gets going
again in a further 20 seconds or so and along comes the task bar followed by
the desktop icons and we're away. The speed of the machine is then absolutely
satisfactory (even better since I removed some programmes from startup), so
there is no problem here. No problem anywhere really in the scale of things,
but I would like to know what might be going on and if there is anything I
can do to reduce my time looking at the lotuses on the computer wallpaper -
although it might be better if keep this 'feature' and use the time to
meditate.

 

[Mike Williams]

Just to put things in perspective, by 'long' I mean about 1½ minutes, so this
is not a matter of life or death. I have XP Pro on my laptop, so when
starting the machine I am not always in a situation when I can go and make a
cup of coffee while it puts its boots on one at a time. And it didn't used to
do this, so I wonder what has changed.

Run MSConfig (at Run... dialog) to see what startup services and
applications are slowing things. Some apps like iTunes, Quicktime,
Acrobat install unnecessary services.

A Spyware review is also a good idea.

 

[Guest]

The machine is free of spyware, no frivolous services are running, I have
stopped possible startup items that are really not needed ... and it is still
the same. The XP blue 'welcome' screen disappears and then ALL IS QUIET and
the taskbar finally makes an appearance after 2 minutes. The pause appears to
be just that - nothing at all seems to be happening, so perhaps nothing is
being loaded.

I will probably end up just having to live with this, but does anyone have
an explanation of this phenomenon?

 

[bxf]

Just to put things in perspective, by 'long' I mean about 1½ minutes, so this
is not a matter of life or death.

Maybe not, but pretty close!

If you have any external devices attached, disconnect those that are
not essential and see if that helps. If so, you should be able to
isolate the one responsible for the delay.

 

[Guest]

Disconnected all external devices and it made no difference. Looks like the
cause of the pause lies elsewhere.

 

[Alias]

The machine is free of spyware, no frivolous services are running, I have
stopped possible startup items that are really not needed ... and it is still
the same. The XP blue 'welcome' screen disappears and then ALL IS QUIET and
the taskbar finally makes an appearance after 2 minutes. The pause appears to
be just that - nothing at all seems to be happening, so perhaps nothing is
being loaded.

I will probably end up just having to live with this, but does anyone have
an explanation of this phenomenon?

You didn't happen to create a folder on your desktop with a lot of files
in it, did you?

 

[Guest]

Nope, I did not create a folder on the desktop with a lot of files in it. In
any case I have just now cleaned up the desktop (just Windows stuff and
shortcuts remain) ... and it has made no difference. Still gazing at
wallpaper for 2 minutes.

 

[Alias]

Nope, I did not create a folder on the desktop with a lot of files in it. In
any case I have just now cleaned up the desktop (just Windows stuff and
shortcuts remain) ... and it has made no difference. Still gazing at
wallpaper for 2 minutes.

Have you tried updating your video drivers? Checked the RAM?

Alias

Use the Reply to Sender feature of your news reader program to email me.
Utiliza Responder al Remitente para mandarme un mail.

 

[Guest]

Video drivers are up-to-date. Not sure what you mean by checking the RAM, but
the total physical memory is 512MB, and the available physical memory is
about 115MB just now. I am not a real geek, so a little explanation is
required.

 

[Jonny]

Make of laptop? Any laptop maker software running?

.............
Jonny

 

[Kerry Brown]

Just to put things in perspective, by 'long' I mean about 1½ minutes,
so this is not a matter of life or death. I have XP Pro on my laptop,
so when starting the machine I am not always in a situation when I
can go and make a cup of coffee while it puts its boots on one at a
time. And it didn't used to do this, so I wonder what has changed.

This is what I observe. The boot goes exactly as expected up to the
blue 'welcome' screen and the rinky-dinky start-up tune, then the
wallpaper appears, and then ... nothing. It just sits there, silently
with apparently no activity on the hard disk. This goes on for about
a minute and then there is a flicker of life from the hard disk,
which then gradually gets going again in a further 20 seconds or so
and along comes the task bar followed by the desktop icons and we're
away. The speed of the machine is then absolutely satisfactory (even
better since I removed some programmes from startup), so there is no
problem here. No problem anywhere really in the scale of things, but
I would like to know what might be going on and if there is anything
I can do to reduce my time looking at the lotuses on the computer
wallpaper - although it might be better if keep this 'feature' and
use the time to meditate.

Is this laptop sometimes connected to a corporate network? Are there a bunch
of items in My Network Places? Is it trying to map network drives?

Kerry

 

[Charlie]

I am guessing XP is trying to do something it can't for some reason and is
timing out. I had the same issue with XP trying to open a scanner that was
connected to the PC. When I disconnected the scanner all worked well. You
may have to experiment a little.

 

[NoStop]

Just to put things in perspective, by 'long' I mean about 1½ minutes, so
this is not a matter of life or death.

XP is just having problems trying to decide if it's a real operating system.
Unfortunately, most of the time it isn't anywhere close to being one.

 

[Talahasee]

XP is just having problems trying to decide if it's a real operating system.
Unfortunately, most of the time it isn't anywhere close to being one.

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

 

[Guest]

Kerry Brown and Charlie were on the right track! The laptop was previously in
an environment where it would connect to the internet via wireless broadband,
whereas just now this is not available and I am back on dial-up temporarily.

So, THE ANSWER was to disable all the LAN & High Speed Internet connections!

Anyway, having also done all the other things suggested to address this
issue the boot is very fast indeed. Thanks for all the useful suggestions
everyone.

 

[Guest]

Is this laptop sometimes connected to a corporate network? Are there a bunch
of items in My Network Places? Is it trying to map network drives?
Kerry

Thanks Kerry. This laptop usually connects to the internet via wireless
broadband, whereas now it's on dial up. The solution was to disable the LAN &
High Speed Internet connections in Network Connections.

 

[Guest]

I am guessing XP is trying to do something it can't for some reason and is
timing out. I had the same issue with XP trying to open a scanner that was
connected to the PC. When I disconnected the scanner all worked well. You
may have to experiment a little.

Thanks Charlie. This laptop usually connects to the internet via wireless
broadband, whereas now it's on dial up. The solution was to disable the LAN &
High Speed Internet connections in Network Connections.

 

[Kerry Brown]

Thanks Kerry. This laptop usually connects to the internet via
wireless broadband, whereas now it's on dial up. The solution was to
disable the LAN & High Speed Internet connections in Network
Connections.

Glad you got it working. I suspect more is going on than that. Changing from
broadband to dialup shouldn't affect the boot up time to any significant
degree. Something that is running during the boot process is trying to
access the Internet or local network. This can be many things - malware,
some program looking for updates, misconfigured static IP settings and
possibly more.

Kerry

 

[Guest]

Just for the record, in case it helps someone else someday, I've had the same
long delay happen when, in a network setting, I had mapped several drives but
one of the drives was no longer available. On bootup Windows would try to
connect to all the mapped drives, without giving a hint what it was doing,
until it timed out (which seemed like 10 minutes but was probably more like
3.) Deleting the faulty mapped drives eliminated the problem.