L
Linda Antonsson
Hi,
Sorry to be reposting this, but this should hopefully be a slightly
clearer description of the problem.
Lately (the last weeks or so), my computer (running XP Home) has been
behaving oddly at startup.
It gets to the point where I see my desktop (or rather, the Explorer
window, as I always have it open) and a few of the autostart programs
load fine (I can see this because some of them put icons in the activity
field). However, at some point during the startup sequence, it hangs for
a while before the rest of them load up. Since some programs load
entirely in the background, without putting any icons in the activity
field, for example) I can't tell for sure which program is the first to
load after the delay. If I could figure that out somehow, I imagine
that'd be the likely culprit.
During this delay, the pointer is normal if I keep it over the regular
window area, but turns into an hourglass if I move it to the taskbar.
And if I try to access the internet during this period (I have a DSL
connection), I can't. So, it seems the network hasn't managed to load.
Eventually, it does continue loading programs, but one thing it never
manages to load is the activity field icon for the volume control. The
network, however, does work once its done loading stuff.
The only time in the last weeks that the computer has started up
normally was after I did a System Restore. Then everything loaded
smoothly, and the volume icon showed up too. It seems things may have
been done in a different sequence then, or maybe things just loaded in
the background since the atcual restore does make it take longer before
you get to the point where you see the desktop. However, on the next
startup after the Restore, the problem was back again.
Any thoughts on what the program (or programs) that causes the delay
might be? I have checked for viruses and spyware and found nothing such.
I have also tried disabling non-essential startup programs through
msconfig, but still no luck.
Occasionally, I also experience problems when shutting down. What
happens then is that when I tell it to shutdown, it clears the desktop
of everything, so that I only see the background image (no taskbar, no
program icons, etc) , but it never gets to the blue screen after. But
this problem is much rarer, occuring perhaps once or twice a month, so I
think that may be relatively 'normal' for XP?
Linda
Sorry to be reposting this, but this should hopefully be a slightly
clearer description of the problem.
Lately (the last weeks or so), my computer (running XP Home) has been
behaving oddly at startup.
It gets to the point where I see my desktop (or rather, the Explorer
window, as I always have it open) and a few of the autostart programs
load fine (I can see this because some of them put icons in the activity
field). However, at some point during the startup sequence, it hangs for
a while before the rest of them load up. Since some programs load
entirely in the background, without putting any icons in the activity
field, for example) I can't tell for sure which program is the first to
load after the delay. If I could figure that out somehow, I imagine
that'd be the likely culprit.
During this delay, the pointer is normal if I keep it over the regular
window area, but turns into an hourglass if I move it to the taskbar.
And if I try to access the internet during this period (I have a DSL
connection), I can't. So, it seems the network hasn't managed to load.
Eventually, it does continue loading programs, but one thing it never
manages to load is the activity field icon for the volume control. The
network, however, does work once its done loading stuff.
The only time in the last weeks that the computer has started up
normally was after I did a System Restore. Then everything loaded
smoothly, and the volume icon showed up too. It seems things may have
been done in a different sequence then, or maybe things just loaded in
the background since the atcual restore does make it take longer before
you get to the point where you see the desktop. However, on the next
startup after the Restore, the problem was back again.
Any thoughts on what the program (or programs) that causes the delay
might be? I have checked for viruses and spyware and found nothing such.
I have also tried disabling non-essential startup programs through
msconfig, but still no luck.
Occasionally, I also experience problems when shutting down. What
happens then is that when I tell it to shutdown, it clears the desktop
of everything, so that I only see the background image (no taskbar, no
program icons, etc) , but it never gets to the blue screen after. But
this problem is much rarer, occuring perhaps once or twice a month, so I
think that may be relatively 'normal' for XP?
Linda
