Slow applications startup ONLY when connecting my PC on the Internet at home

  • Thread starter Thread starter sarah
  • Start date Start date
S

sarah

Hello Everyone,

I have an XP SP2 (fully patched) laptop that I use at home and at work.
When at work it is connected to the LAN via 100 MEG ethernet. When at
home I connect it via an NTL 1MB broadband internet connection.

When I use my computer at home and unlike at work, all applications
(launched either from the quick launch or from desktop or from the
Start menu) take up to 2 minutes to open. After this initial delay
everything returns to normal.

I'm not sure what is causing this or what the computer is doing when it
occurs. Checking Task Manager gives no clues, no excessive memory or
processor use and most of the time while they are opening is spent on
System Idle Process.
These problems disappear when I disconnect my computer from the
internet. It has got to the stage that if I want to open a new
application it is quicker to remove the cable, let the application
open at normal speed and then reconnect and negotiate a new DHCP
address which sometime takes ages to be completed!

I check my system every day for any spyware or virus using ad-aware,
spybot,
I also run norton anti-virus 2005 everyday. All the above tools report
my system is free from spyware and virus. I also check my internet
security using norton's online security check. It reports my system is
secure.

I have just removed the NTL netguard, but with no improvement

Any help please

Many thanks
 
Hello Everyone,

I have an XP SP2 (fully patched) laptop that I use at home and at work.
When at work it is connected to the LAN via 100 MEG ethernet. When at
home I connect it via an NTL 1MB broadband internet connection.

When I use my computer at home and unlike at work, all applications
(launched either from the quick launch or from desktop or from the
Start menu) take up to 2 minutes to open. After this initial delay
everything returns to normal.

I'm not sure what is causing this or what the computer is doing when it
occurs. Checking Task Manager gives no clues, no excessive memory or
processor use and most of the time while they are opening is spent on
System Idle Process.
These problems disappear when I disconnect my computer from the
internet. It has got to the stage that if I want to open a new
application it is quicker to remove the cable, let the application
open at normal speed and then reconnect and negotiate a new DHCP
address which sometime takes ages to be completed!

I check my system every day for any spyware or virus using ad-aware,
spybot,
I also run norton anti-virus 2005 everyday. All the above tools report
my system is free from spyware and virus. I also check my internet
security using norton's online security check. It reports my system is
secure.

I have just removed the NTL netguard, but with no improvement

Any help please

Many thanks
Click to expand...
************** REPLY SEPARATER ****************
Because you connect to your Local Area Network at work via the same Ethernet
card that you connect to the Internet at home, your computer does not
immediately know that they are not one of the same. It is obvious that your
computer is searching for some resource that it previously had access to at
work. XP has a nasty habit of trying to remember all the various connections
that you have made since day one. Try clearing out all the connections
(including printers) in your network neighborhood before connecting to the
Internet.

J.A> Coutts
 
sarah said:
Hello Everyone,

I have an XP SP2 (fully patched) laptop that I use at home and at
work. When at work it is connected to the LAN via 100 MEG ethernet.
When at home I connect it via an NTL 1MB broadband internet
connection.

When I use my computer at home and unlike at work, all applications
(launched either from the quick launch or from desktop or from the
Start menu) take up to 2 minutes to open. After this initial delay
everything returns to normal.

I'm not sure what is causing this or what the computer is doing when
it occurs. Checking Task Manager gives no clues, no excessive memory
or processor use and most of the time while they are opening is spent
on System Idle Process.
These problems disappear when I disconnect my computer from the
internet. It has got to the stage that if I want to open a new
application it is quicker to remove the cable, let the application
open at normal speed and then reconnect and negotiate a new DHCP
address which sometime takes ages to be completed!

I check my system every day for any spyware or virus using ad-aware,
spybot,
I also run norton anti-virus 2005 everyday. All the above tools report
my system is free from spyware and virus. I also check my internet
security using norton's online security check. It reports my system is
secure.
Click to expand...

I'm going to take a SWAG and assume that your laptop is a member of an
Active Directory domain at work, and you are using your domain account at
home. This is the exact behavior you will get when you connect to a network
and it starts looking for its Domain Controller. You can work around this by
creating a local machine account to use when you are at home and give that
account permissions to access the Documents in your Domain Profile.
 
Kevin said:
sarah wrote:

I'm going to take a SWAG and assume that your laptop is a member of an
Active Directory domain at work, and you are using your domain account at
home. This is the exact behavior you will get when you connect to a network
and it starts looking for its Domain Controller. You can work around this by
creating a local machine account to use when you are at home and give that
account permissions to access the Documents in your Domain Profile.
Click to expand...

I am logging on a local machine account when using my laptop @ home
 
I would still suspect that something like a mapped drive being looked for.
Those delays are almost always because the computer is waiting for some
expected resource to time-out. Similar to trying to open "My Computer" with
an unreadable CD in the drive. It also could be set up to use a proxy server
at work, although that timeout is not usually as long.

...kurt
 
I would look at the applications. They may be needing to connect to a
resopurce (server, files in a share, etc) on your company's LAN. They may be
timing out at the 2 minute or so mark, knowing they cannot find them. If you
connect to your company's LAN via VPN, I bet the problem goes away, or at
least is not as slow.

--
Ace
Innovative IT Concepts, Inc (IITCI)
Willow Grove, PA

This posting is provided "AS-IS" with no warranties or guarantees and
confers no rights.

Ace Fekay, MCSE 2003 & 2000, MCSA 2003 & 2000, MCSE+I, MCT, MVP
Microsoft MVP - Directory Services
Microsoft Certified Trainer

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