Experts please: Strange delay on startup at desktop

  • Thread starter Thread starter Jorg
  • Start date Start date
J

Jorg

I have a problem I had before and got fixed as a result of
a post here - but, shame on me, I forgot what to do :-(

Here is what happens:

I just set up a brand new system and started from scratch
with a new installation of XP Home on a formatted hard
drive.

On start-up, the system boots and gets straight to the
Windows desktop - no problem. But when the desktop
appears, the system is not yet ready for me - it just
looks that way. When I try to open an application (any
application) immediately after the desktop shows, the
application starts opening but then freezes for a good
minute or so before it comes up, ready to be used.

The problem must be with XP because if I wait for one or
two minutes after the desktop shows up and then start an
application, the application opens in a flash. Please
remember, the system is new - no virus, no worm, no
spyware, no nothing!

The funny thing is that the hard drive does not appear to
be doing anything in the minute in which the system
freezes. Only at the very end of the minute there is a
short burst of HDD activity and then the system is ready
to go.

Last time I had the same issue, one of you experts told me
to tick or untick a box somewhere and the problem was
gone. All I remember that I would have never associated
the thing I ticked or unticked with the problem.

Anyway, the fix was trivial but I just cannot remember how
I did it. Any ideas anyone? I promise to remember too!
 
"Please remember, the system is new - no virus, no worm, no spyware, no
nothing!"

Keep in mind that an unprotected, or incompletely protected, computer can be
infected with a virus in less than one second from the time it first
connects to the Internet.

Rocky
 
Try any one or more of the following (in no particular order)

Delete the items in your prefetch folder x:\windows\prefetc

Turn off HyperThreadin

Adjust your visual settings if you don't have a nice graphics card (if you have onboard graphics,m then it isn't nice :)

Fire up msconfig (Start>Run>msconfig) and go to Startup Tab to see what runs at startup - this may slow things down

Examine and turn off any unnecessary Services (Start>Run>services.msc) If you need to knwo what they do, check out BlackViper's excellent treatise at
http://www.blackviper.com/WinXP/service411.ht

Download the BootVis tool (unsupported) at http://www.softpedia.com/public/cat/12/2/12-2-1.shtml and go straight to 'Trace>Optimize System' it will reboot and then after you log in again after reboot, let it run to completion

Hope one of these can help you.
 
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