Annoying pause after XP boot-up.

Okay, seriously, I don't think this post should be here, but I cannot find another section to match the problem.

Whenever I boot up WindowsXP, after I get past the login screen, the desktop appears, and the little services start running, etc etc. Here the problem. There's this annoyingly long pause during which I cannot run any appz, or anything.. sure, when I click 'Start', the menu appears, and right-clicking in the desktop area brings up the menu, but I can't do anything with the menus.

After about, 50-70 seconds, a windows explorer window pops up, the link is E:\Windows\something (don't remember what). After this thing appears, everything runs smoothly. How exactly do I get rid of this window opening everytime I boot, and what else is the problem. Why the pause? If this isn't enough info, please let me know... I'll provide whatever I can.

Oh, and in the second login I've created ( User ) for XP, the same problem occurs. I've checked the startup.ini, and tinkered a bit with msconfig, but came up with nothing. Maybe thats cos I don't really know what I'm looking for. Help me out people.

Thanks.
:)

Quote:

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After about, 50-70 seconds, a windows explorer window pops up, the link is E:\Windows\something (don't remember what).

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Will you reboot your system and check what "somethig" is?
And is E the drive which your windows is installed or it is your CDRom ?

Also, check your Event Viewer (it's under Administrative Tools in Control Panel). As Unleashed suggested, restart your computer and find out what the "something" is. Once you've done that, also check your Event Log to find out if there is more information there (I suggest you do so after you restart so that you will have a rough idea of what time the event occured, so it will be easier to find in case you have other errors and/or warnings in your log).

AJ

I have the same problem. It might be linked with the 'mysterios' link popping up, or maybe not. Make sure to limit starting services, too. If you have Norton, it also might be taking a huge bite out of your free resources, since it opens up many processes. However, admist all things, I personally think this 'pause' was because of a BlackICE firewall installation. Did you ever install BlackICE?

here we go again. :)

Okay, the exact location is C:\Program Files\MSN Gaming Zone\WINDOWS . I have Win98 on C:, Win2k on D: and WinXP on E:. And I use XP all the time. They are just different partitions on the same hard disk.

I cleared out the Event Logs, and then rebooted the machine. I got 6 errors in the 'System' Category, and 1 in the 'Application' category. All 6 under System were from Service Control Manager.

The errors:

The Aspi32 service failed to start due to the following error:
The system cannot find the file specified.

Timeout (30000 milliseconds) waiting for a transaction response from the BITS service.

Timeout (30000 milliseconds) waiting for a transaction response from the ShellHWDetection service.

Timeout (30000 milliseconds) waiting for a transaction response from the ShellHWDetection service.

The Background Intelligent Transfer Service service hung on starting.

and

The Terminal Services service failed to start due to the following error:
All pipe instances are busy.

Whew, there we go. And under Applications:

Faulting application SymProxySvc.exe, version 4.0.3.104, faulting module ntdll.dll, version 5.1.2600.0, fault address 0x000032bb.

That was it. Once again the pause occured. I disabled Norton Personal Firewall on startup before rebooting, but not the AV. Any suggestions on what might be the problem. I've run up-to-date virus scans, and they don't give anything. And no, I didn't install BlackICE.

Cheers.

Is it XP home edition or professional.
I have:
XP home @ home: Log on is a pain. Slow, bulky, very ME reminiscent. I have to wait for a couple things to happen before i can click the start button: norton needs to get its head out of its a$$ and enable, all drives need to be checked by OS. afterwards, start button is just fine. before, it delays and even right clicking delays until above can be processed.
XP Pro @ work: From the beginning, i had constant crashing, random log off of network drives, ended up formatting and reinstalling and everything works fine now.

not the original problem but this is aimed at qwerty_smith. I have found with XP i have or should say had the same problem with waiting for it to finish to boot up. I would have to wait a little while and all the time I was waiting my norton in system tray was inactive because had a slash threw it. After it loads all the way it would become active again. I didnt have my computer networked to another computer at the time and decided to disable my network adapter because it was not in use. When I did this after I restarted it would boot right up quicker than ever and norton would not get disabled. So if this is something like your problem and you dont use your network adapter just disable it.

thanks for the idea, euclid, but i use adsl to connect. this necessitates the use of tcp/ip to connect. i'm in no hurry… :P