Slow XP start up

[Murray]

XP starts up smoothly and then hangs at the final step
where the task bar has to populate. I have used Bootvis,
and have used msconfig to remove all start up programs.
This does not help. Eventually the task bar populates
with Outlook Express,Internet Explorer, and Show Desktop
on the left side and with the clock on the right. The
delay time varies from none to about 2 minutes with an
empty task bar. Anybody have any ideas? Apparently I am
not the only one with this problem.

 

[Rich Barry]

Murray, look for a virus, trojan and spyware. Use these sites to check.

http://www.lavasoftusa.com/software/adaware/



http://security.kolla.de/news.php?lang=en



http://housecall.trendmicro.com/

 

[Michael]

Chances are you will use adaware and Spybot S&D, find a
couple of things, fix them, reboot and have the same
problem, I know I did.

What was slowing my boot process was Symantec products. I
have had the boot problem with Norton AV 2003, Norton
Systemworks 2003, Norton AV 2004. Each one would work ok
for a while, then one day my computer would take forever
to boot. I would uncheck in the startup list and services
list anything to do with Symantec or Norton and it boots
normally. Same problem eventually with all three products.