Long time flashing cursor at start

[Julie]

When I turn on my computer, sometimes I get a flashing
cursor in the upper left hand corner of the screen for up
to 10 minutes before my desktop appears. Dell said that
it is a Microsoft problem. The computer seems to work
fine otherwise--can you please tell me how to fix this
intermittent problem? THANKS!

 

[The Unknown P]

Get BootVis and try it. You can also go to www.kellys-
korner-xp.com and read up on some of the tweaks to improve
boot times and to limit hung apps,timeouts and so on. You
can also check to see that your boot path is not corrupt.
go>start\run and type in msconfig and hit ok and then
click the boot.ini tab and then the check all boot paths
button. Regular maintenance is a must like the defrag and
chkdsk and disk cleanup and shut useless things like
system recovery and indexing off. Make sure you desktop
only has shortcuts on it and not full programs or files.
If you have full programs or files then they must be
completely loaded before you can use you desktop. There is
much more you can do but this is a start. Keep smiling.