10 minute boot up after WinXP crash

[Squisher]

Computer experienced an "Unknown device driver" crash about two weeks ago.

Now It will boot to the point of the "welcome screen" then hang for about 20 seconds then the backgound of my desktop will appear, but no icons and no taskbar. This will last 8 minutes with minimal activity from the hard drive then everything comes back fine. While it's hanging I can access Task Manager and nothing looks out of sorts.

The big problem is that once I can actually do something in Windows everything is functioning fine. If some device was fubar after boot up I'd know where to look.

As a last resort I tried installing XP over the top of the existing XP and it even saved my 8 minute boot hang. :roll:

What's my next step?

 

[dclive]

Tell us if it happens in safe mode
Tell us if anything changes if you're on or off your network
Turn off automatic login, log in as another user, and tell us if anything changes
Go into MSCONFIG and turn off everything but MS services. Tell us if it still happens.

 

[dclive]

 

[imported_nocturne]

well, dclive, it seems like he doesn't need our help... *huff*

To continue, squisher, the next step would seem to be a full reformat and reinstallation of windows...

If that's out of the question, you could try to answer back when people offer their help... (j/k)

Honestly, you should try out Bootvis (on M$ website). It can help you graphically 'see' what is eating up the boot time, and therefor help you find the culprit. As dclive stated, it is probally caused by a non-system service or networking. I had a similar problem recently, and found out it was a multifunction printer/fax service loading with windows. I just disabled it and the problem was fixed.

 

[Squisher]

Sorry for the slow reply. I just worked a couple 12 hr. days and was working on my kids car. I really didn't want to reply until I did all of dclive's suggestions.

Yeah, I'm only a couple months from my last fresh install.

Sorry again.

 

[themusgrat]

Are you overclocking? One of mine did that after an overclocking relating crash. It was my RAID controller that took a long time to initialize at boot, then Windows would hang too.

 

[SultanEmerr]

http://www.webtree.ca/windowsxp/repair_xp.htm