B
Bob Semancowitz
My customer has an HP Laptop running XP home. XP is patched to current
levels.
When the system boots, the computer loads the hardware profile that we
select (we set up multiple hardware profiles to select various network
configurations), and we quickly see the XP splash screen. Soon thereafter,
we get the login window. Once we enter the username and password, it takes
forever to see the desktop. We see blank wallpaper colors, but no icons.
I'm guessing it takes a good minute to get to a point where we can do things
with the computer. We do have 50 processes loading, but there is a point in
this load cycle where the hard disk doesn't do anything for 30 seconds, as if
it's trying to time out. Once we get the icons on the desktop, the stuff on
the bottom toolbar loads pretty quickly (McAfee, the HP wireless assistant,
etc). This suggests that one of these loading programs is not causing the
issue.
I'm not sure if this delay is due to all of the stuff that this person has
installed on her computer. I did turn off as much stuff as possible in
MSCONFIG start menu, but I want to make sure that there's nothing else going
on before I stop trying to fix things. There are no viruses infecting the
system, and there are no errors in the event log.
How should I go about troubleshooting this? I tried running Task Manager
quickly after boot up, but I don't see anything taking up loads of disk IOs,
or CPU utilization. Again, the problem is between login window and getting
the icons on the desktop.
One other thing: Something changed the path statement for the Security
Center Service, putting a C:\windows\ in between the %systemroot%, which
caused this service to fail to load. I fixed the path
(%systemroot%\system32\xxxxx. I then saw an error about the Wireless Zero
Config service. Since there was an HP wireless utility running that
controlled the wireless config, I shut this off. All errors then disappeared
from the Event Log. Not sure what caused these changes because I didn't set
up the laptop or do most of the maintenance.
Thanks for the advice.
C
levels.
When the system boots, the computer loads the hardware profile that we
select (we set up multiple hardware profiles to select various network
configurations), and we quickly see the XP splash screen. Soon thereafter,
we get the login window. Once we enter the username and password, it takes
forever to see the desktop. We see blank wallpaper colors, but no icons.
I'm guessing it takes a good minute to get to a point where we can do things
with the computer. We do have 50 processes loading, but there is a point in
this load cycle where the hard disk doesn't do anything for 30 seconds, as if
it's trying to time out. Once we get the icons on the desktop, the stuff on
the bottom toolbar loads pretty quickly (McAfee, the HP wireless assistant,
etc). This suggests that one of these loading programs is not causing the
issue.
I'm not sure if this delay is due to all of the stuff that this person has
installed on her computer. I did turn off as much stuff as possible in
MSCONFIG start menu, but I want to make sure that there's nothing else going
on before I stop trying to fix things. There are no viruses infecting the
system, and there are no errors in the event log.
How should I go about troubleshooting this? I tried running Task Manager
quickly after boot up, but I don't see anything taking up loads of disk IOs,
or CPU utilization. Again, the problem is between login window and getting
the icons on the desktop.
One other thing: Something changed the path statement for the Security
Center Service, putting a C:\windows\ in between the %systemroot%, which
caused this service to fail to load. I fixed the path
(%systemroot%\system32\xxxxx. I then saw an error about the Wireless Zero
Config service. Since there was an HP wireless utility running that
controlled the wireless config, I shut this off. All errors then disappeared
from the Event Log. Not sure what caused these changes because I didn't set
up the laptop or do most of the maintenance.
Thanks for the advice.
C
