OT: laptop software question

[spodosaurus]

Hi all,

I'm asking this here because I don't frequent groups that have people
with the same level of expertise as is found here.

I'm trying to help a mate with his new Acer 1642ZWLMI laptop. He has XP
Pro SP2 and Office 2003 on it. Using Outlook (not OE) as an exmaple the
system goes incredibly slowly (like taking a minute just to open the
control panel). When I check what's hogging the CPU I see that Acer's
launch manager is at 96%-99%. Terminating the launch manager fixes
everything, so I've uninstalled it. Now everything works at the speed
it's supposed to but it does a concerning thing at startup that I want
to fix: the system starts up (it's set to go right to the only user's
account), displays the desktop briefly, plays the logoff sound, then
goes back to the Windows screen followed by returning to the desktop. It
takes the same amount of time to get to the desktop as before,
everything /seems/ to be running fine, but this wierdness has me
worried. Has anyone encountered this before? Any suggestions (reasonable
and constructive ones, please)? I dislike pre-built systems for this
very reason: manufacturer software mucking things up!

Regards,

Ari


--
spammage trappage: remove the underscores to reply

I'm going to die rather sooner than I'd like. I tried to protect my
neighbours from crime, and became the victim of it. Complications in
hospital following this resulted in a serious illness. I now need a bone
marrow transplant. Many people around the world are waiting for a marrow
transplant, too. Please volunteer to be a marrow donor:
http://www.abmdr.org.au/
http://www.marrow.org/

 

[Jack F. Twist]

I've never run into this specific behavior before, but the fix is pretty
obvious: repartition/reformat the drive and reinstall XP -- without
Acer's software package. This could get dicey, depending on
what hardware is installed on the laptop, and how many drivers
can be found and installed without using Acer's install package.

If you want a less drastic solution you'll need to muck through all
50+ possible registry locations for startup services, programs,
utilities etc and try to figure out which one is causing the problem.
Here's the list of autostart locations for XP:
http://www.diamondcs.com.au/index.php?page=autostarts

From the symptom, I'd say it's a service rather than a driver or
utility that's causing this particular behavior, but I could be wrong.

 

[spodosaurus]

I've never run into this specific behavior before, but the fix is pretty
obvious: repartition/reformat the drive and reinstall XP -- without
Acer's software package. This could get dicey, depending on
what hardware is installed on the laptop, and how many drivers
can be found and installed without using Acer's install package.

At least they got the full XP disc set with their laptop, not just the
acer partition.

If you want a less drastic solution you'll need to muck through all
50+ possible registry locations for startup services, programs,
utilities etc and try to figure out which one is causing the problem.
Here's the list of autostart locations for XP:
http://www.diamondcs.com.au/index.php?page=autostarts

mmmm fun

From the symptom, I'd say it's a service rather than a driver or
utility that's causing this particular behavior, but I could be wrong.

If he's happy with it this way, and nothing else breaks, I think he'd
prefer to just leave it as is rather than have me reformat it all now
that he has everything setup again.


--
spammage trappage: remove the underscores to reply

I'm going to die rather sooner than I'd like. I tried to protect my
neighbours from crime, and became the victim of it. Complications in
hospital following this resulted in a serious illness. I now need a bone
marrow transplant. Many people around the world are waiting for a marrow
transplant, too. Please volunteer to be a marrow donor:
http://www.abmdr.org.au/
http://www.marrow.org/