Long pauses when launching tools

[Gary Fritz]

When I first reboot my XP Pro SP2 system, everything works as I would
expect. But after a while, something changes so that launching one tool
from another starts to take a VERY long time.

Examples:
* Opening a .doc file from a URL on a web page
* Clicking on a URL in my emailer (Pegasus) or my newsreader (Xnews)
* Typing a system hotkey (associated with a shortcut)

Once it gets into the "after a while" state, actions like this cause the
launching/requesting tool to freeze up for upwards of 3-5 minutes.
Eventually it finally responds, and everything proceeds normally.

Rebooting the system restores everything to normal, for a while.

Any guesses what's causing this and how I can fix it? It makes the system
fairly unusable without frequent reboots.

Thanks,
Gary

 

[Frank Saunders MS-MVP IE,OE/WM]

When I first reboot my XP Pro SP2 system, everything works as I would
expect. But after a while, something changes so that launching one tool
from another starts to take a VERY long time.

Examples:
* Opening a .doc file from a URL on a web page
* Clicking on a URL in my emailer (Pegasus) or my newsreader (Xnews)
* Typing a system hotkey (associated with a shortcut)

Once it gets into the "after a while" state, actions like this cause the
launching/requesting tool to freeze up for upwards of 3-5 minutes.
Eventually it finally responds, and everything proceeds normally.

Rebooting the system restores everything to normal, for a while.

Any guesses what's causing this and how I can fix it? It makes the system
fairly unusable without frequent reboots.

Thanks,
Gary

Do a thorough check for malware, following all of the steps at one of these
Web pages.
Help with malware:
All MS-MVP Sites.
http://aumha.org/a/parasite.htm
http://aumha.org/a/quickfix.htm
http://www.elephantboycomputers.com/page2.html#Removing_Malware
http://mvps.org/winhelp2002/unwanted.htm
http://inetexplorer.mvps.org/darnit.html
http://www.mvps.org/sramesh2k/Malware_Defence.htm

Unexplained computer behavior may be caused by deceptive software.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/827315

So How Did I Get Infected Anyway?
For quite a few people it's by installing programs like Messenger Plus,
whose ads for malware don't identify the malware as such and try to convince
you that you owe it to the author. See also:
http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=27971
Don't ever do a "default" install of anything. Always choose Custom and see
what else is being carried along. Don't install any extras you're not sure
of.

 

[Gary Fritz]

Do a thorough check for malware,

While anything is possible these days, I don't think that's it. I surf a
lot and I install a lot of software, but I'm careful. I've been using
Windows since 3.0, and the only time I ever got any kind of infection was
when my digital camera brought home a USB autoload virus from an overseas
internet cafe. I have NEVER gotten infected by malware off the net.
(knock on wood

But just in case, I ran current versions of Windows Defender, Ad-Aware,
and Spybot S&D. All they found was some tracking cookies. I run AVG and
haven't had any problems there.

I suppose the next step is to run HijackThis. I can send a log if you
want to see it. I'm no expert at reading HijackThis logs, but it looks
pretty benign to me. There are some BHOs but only for things I know and
want. The only surprise is some registry changes for IE start page /
search bar / etc pointing to www.gateway.com -- this is an eMachines box
-- but I don't see those when I run IE. But I generally run Firefox so
I'm not too worried about those anyway.

Is there anything else you might suggest? Or do you still believe it's a
malware problem?

Thanks,
Gary

 

[Bruce.]

When I first reboot my XP Pro SP2 system, everything works as I would
expect. But after a while, something changes so that launching one tool
from another starts to take a VERY long time.

Examples:
* Opening a .doc file from a URL on a web page
* Clicking on a URL in my emailer (Pegasus) or my newsreader (Xnews)
* Typing a system hotkey (associated with a shortcut)

Once it gets into the "after a while" state, actions like this cause the
launching/requesting tool to freeze up for upwards of 3-5 minutes.
Eventually it finally responds, and everything proceeds normally.

All I can tell you is my XP Pro SP2 system does exactly the same. It runs
great and then for no reason starts doing exactly as you describe but
perhaps not as long a delay. In my case about 45 seconds or so. I use
multiple hotkeys and the system just freezes until the program finally
launchs. Examples are hotkeys to Notepad and Calculator. Chosing Notepad
or Calculator from the menu picks does not invoke the same delay, only the
hotkeys.

I've never been able to figure out why it does that and it's pretty
irritating. All I can add to this thread is that during the wait, there is
no disk activity, and there is also no processes sucking CPU time either
before the pause or after it.

Bruce.

 

[Gary Fritz]

All I can tell you is my XP Pro SP2 system does exactly the same. It
runs great and then for no reason starts doing exactly as you describe
but perhaps not as long a delay. In my case about 45 seconds or so.

Mine doesn't always take 3-5 minutes, but sometimes it does. 1-2 minutes
may be a more typical time. I just tried double-clicking on a .doc file in
Windows Explorer, and Explorer locked up for 105 seconds before the Word
file opened. I clicked on a hyperlink in my Pegasus email client and it
locked up for just about the same time (107 seconds) before Firefox
responded. Both Word and Firefox were already running before I did this.

All I can add to this thread is that during the wait,
there is no disk activity, and there is also no processes sucking CPU
time either before the pause or after it.

Agreed. Absolutely nothing is happening while it sits there for several
minutes.

 

[Gary Fritz]

Hmmmmmm. Bruce, by any chance do you run NetStatLive on your system?

NSL is a network-monitoring app, see
http://www.analogx.com/contents/download/network/nsl.htm. I've been
running it all the time -- it's in HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows
\CurrentVersion\Run. Usually it runs in the systray, and occasionally I
pop it up to see what's happening on the network.

I was going to make sure that no traffic was going over the wire when a
launching app hung up, but my NSL systray icon wasn't responding. I went
into Task manager and killed the nsl.exe process -- and *instantly* my
system went into Standby mode. WTF !??

AND -- when I woke it up again, the "delay when launching another app"
problem was gone. Hmmmmmm.

Maybe NSL was somehow causing this problem??

I think I'll remove it from the autoruns list and just define a hotkey for
it... If the problem shows up again, at least I'll know it wasn't NSL.

 

[Bruce.]

Hmmmmmm. Bruce, by any chance do you run NetStatLive on your system?

Nope. Never heard of it. So I'm sure that's not the source of my delays.

Bruce.