What would cause a long delay for windows to show the Start Menu and items on the desktop after loading?

[sideshow23bob]

Old Thread, Please Delete

 

[ForumMaster]

so only standby does this? try hibernate and see. maybe try TuneXP and assuming you have enough RAM, force windows to keep it's kernel in the RAM. it could help.

 

[dclive]

Originally posted by: sideshow23bob
So I have a pretty new laptop(Dell E1505) and ever since I shut the screen( to assumedly put the laptop in stand by), the laptop takes 1 1/2 to 2 minutes to load to the normal desktop after Windows makes the welcome sound. During that time I can see my desktop background, but it doesn't show the Start Menu, bottom toolbar, or any of the icons on the desktop. Everything is normal after the 2 or so minutes, but that time adds up and I'd like to know what the problem is and how to fix it.
Thanks,
John

Use MSCONFIG and disable all non-MS stuff. Reboot. Does the problem go away? If so, add stuff, half by half, until you figure out what the problem is.

 

[Niege]

I came looking for the same info. I, too, have a new machine with MCE and for the first week everything went well. Yesterday the boot slowed down just like sideshow's. It just hung. I went to system restore and went back to the previoius restore point and it worked. Then it didn't.

I went back two restore points and it did not work. I went into Safe mode (where it booted like regular) did a virus scan and tried again. This time it did boot, but it took 8, that is eight minutes to get from the blank wallpaper to the full desktop. This is with a x2 3800 w/1Gb.

I looked at the wbemess.log and one of the things is said was that NCPROV didn't find function info for index 30. The other entry was NT Event Log Consumer could not retrieve sid 0x80041002.

At this point it is beyond my level of expertise. It sounds like a MCE problem. Help for us both!

 

[RelaxTheMind]

A program that is taking long time to load back into memory.

Anyone remember a microsft tool call "BootVis" it ananlyzed your boot up/standby/hibernate recovery times and told you how long it took to load each program and driver.

Therefore you can see what drivers are getting stuck and programs are lagging the process.

See if you can get your hands on BootVis.exe

 

[Niege]

I found a copy of BootVis here It's no longer available or supporte by MS. But a warning message on the dl site said to turn off Restore before using it or you would lose all your restore points; and.... turning off Restore removes all your Restore points. I'm kind of reluctant to lose ALL the Restore points. I'll try the msconfig time consuming route. Thanks!

 

[Niege]

After more reboots today than I made in the last two years combined it seems as if my long delay was caused by a Microsoft service: Plug and Play. If that one is checked to run it takes an addtional 2-3 minutes to have the icons and taskbar appear. I couldn't replicate my 8 minute deal once I started to play with it, but 2-3 minutes is still a long time.

With just that one service not loaded the delay from the time the wallpaper appears until the icons appear is about 18 seconds. What long term effect this may have I don't know. Probably would make device installation a bitch. Why this service would just arbitrarily start to take so long, I don't know. Any suggestions?

 

[sideshow23bob]

Hey Niege, how do you disable that Microsoft Plug and Play service?
Thanks and FYI to everybody it does it on any kind of reboot to windows(after standby, restart, and shut down).

 

[Niege]

Start-Run-msconfig. Then go to the Services tab, scroll down until you see "Plug and Play" and uncheck the box. Apply and Close, then choose Restart when the box comes up.

I am abit apprehensive about keeping this, though. For instance I turned on my USB external drive and the system now won't detect it. And the "Add Hardware" function in Control Panel now won't work.

Does anyone have any idea why Plug and Play service suddenly started looking for new hardware on each boot? And how to stop it from doing that?

 

[dclive]

We don't really know that it's the PnP service that's actually causing the problem just yet. It could be a service on your system that depends on it, or it could be a device in your system that depends on it. Without more testing, I'm not certain it's fair to blame PnP just yet.

If you disable USB in your motherboard's BIOS, reboot, enable PnP, and reboot, does it still take a long time to start up, for example?

 

[Niege]

I'll give that a try. My current concern is that I enabled PnP, rebooted while turning on my USB drive, (it took 3 minutes from wallpaper to icons), and now there is no USB icon in the system tray. It always has one because I have an internal card reader and it always shows 4 USB drives; now there isn't even the icon.

The frustrating thing is that I got this new rig a week ago and I don't think it should be so screwed up so soon. I kept it pretty clean, not installing all the programs I had on my old system. I also just went back to check on my Restore points and somehow they all got deleted without any intervention by me (I did not run BootVis or manually delete any). I'm wondering if the whole OS is unstable.

 

[SunnyD]

The system is going to probe for new devices every time it boots up. However, my own laptop (Dell D820) takes about a minute to fully reach the desktop, and I know why... the machine is domained, and it has to wait for the network to come up (which by default is delay-loaded in a Windows install) in order to authenticate against the domain controller. I also get similar behavior on my home desktop which isn't domained - however I don't have access to the internet or network resources for about a minute after I see the desktop - again, Windows is delayed loading the network drivers and bringing up the network, and because I don't require any sort of network authentication it doesn't have to wait for it before logging me in and giving me the desktop.

 

[dclive]

Originally posted by: SunnyD
The system is going to probe for new devices every time it boots up. However, my own laptop (Dell D820) takes about a minute to fully reach the desktop, and I know why... the machine is domained, and it has to wait for the network to come up (which by default is delay-loaded in a Windows install) in order to authenticate against the domain controller. I also get similar behavior on my home desktop which isn't domained - however I don't have access to the internet or network resources for about a minute after I see the desktop - again, Windows is delayed loading the network drivers and bringing up the network, and because I don't require any sort of network authentication it doesn't have to wait for it before logging me in and giving me the desktop.

Unless your domain admins are doing something funny (say, a poorly designed and placed machine startup script), that shouldn't be the case - under XP, by default, it won't wait for the domain like a 2000 box (by default) will.

Also note that, even on your home machine, the network interface, device drivers, etc. are fully loaded long before you press CTRL-ALT-DEL. Don't believe me? Assign some software to that machine via Group Policy's software assignment. Note that it will install said software, in the machine startup process, long before you've actually logged in.

Edit: Just realized your home PC isn't on a domain, but it really doesn't matter - the network stuff is loaded and present long before you get to the desktop. To test on a non-domained PC, just do a constant ping of the machine - you'll note the pings will respond long before you get to the desktop - waayyyyy before.

 

[xtknight]

Shell scripts are prime culprits for delays.

 

[dclive]

Originally posted by: Niege
I'll give that a try. My current concern is that I enabled PnP, rebooted while turning on my USB drive, (it took 3 minutes from wallpaper to icons), and now there is no USB icon in the system tray. It always has one because I have an internal card reader and it always shows 4 USB drives; now there isn't even the icon.

The frustrating thing is that I got this new rig a week ago and I don't think it should be so screwed up so soon. I kept it pretty clean, not installing all the programs I had on my old system. I also just went back to check on my Restore points and somehow they all got deleted without any intervention by me (I did not run BootVis or manually delete any). I'm wondering if the whole OS is unstable.

Rip out, or, in the motherboard edit:BIOS, completely disable that add-in media card gizmo and re-try the tests (ie after you've tried with USB disabled in the motherboard.)

Right now I'm not prepared to say the machine itself is screwed up. Let's just take it easy and try to fix it - I bet we can.

 

[Niege]

Just got back. I'll try the hardware thing soon. First I have to find a PS/2 mouse since I only have a USB one handy.

It's like the machine just suddenly went weird. It was booting just fine then, without any new hardware or programs installed, suddenly went to this 3-8 minute delay. In msconfig I disabled all services except required ones and disabled all startup options. Then I enabled one service and rebooted. It took 18-20 seconds from wallpaper to icons. Then I enabled the second service and rebooted. Everything was 18-20 seconds until I got to Plug and Play and then it was 3 minutes. Each enabled item after that did not significantly increase the delay. So something in Plug and Play got strange all of a sudden. Just now I installed a new image processing program and on the reboot it was 6 minutes delay.

Thanks for the advice! I'll report back soon.

 

[dclive]

The problem could be with something PnP offers (like the USB media drives, etc.), or another service dependent on PnP. When you look at your services, what's dependent on PnP? If you keep PnP enabled, and disable all of those services, is it still slow to boot up?

 

[Niege]

Doh. I don't need a mouse to test the boot.... I disabled USB in BIOS and the boot was almost instantaneous. I went back in and enabled USB and it was the 4 minute delay. So I guess PnP is hunting for those four USB "drives" that are wrapped up in that combo card reader. USB 1.1 and 2.0 are enabled in BIOS.

dclive: see my previous - I did a complete (and excruciatingly slow) enable and reboot with all the Microsoft services, alphabetically, until PnP, at which time the boot slowed down. All non-MS services were disabled.

It now looks like PnP is taking a humungous amount of time to detect that card reader. I don't know what to do about that. I'm doing a lot of photography and I need the card reader. Thanks for sticking around, dclive!

 

[dclive]

Glad to see you found the actual problem.

You might have installed a media program that scans USB devices; another possibility is you've installed a program that messes with filesystem filter drivers, and that's causing a delay as is tries to (but cannot) read from the devices in question (since assumedly there's nothing in there most of the time) and then things get stuck in a loop.

So...what have you installed, lately?

MPSReports (filter.txt) will tell you, but without knowing the baseline (ie being familiar with reading it) it's not going to be terribly useful to you.

 

[Niege]

I went into device manager and disabled three out of the card reader "drives" that I don't use. That speeded up it up greatly. There's one CF card reader installed in an old HP Photosmart printer that I also disabled; but it was usually off during all these reboots. I'll check to see if that's the most problematic device.

You are absolutely correct about MPSReports. I ran it and have been brought to my knees with information overwhelm in language I cannot even aspire to.

I don't remember the order of everything I installed. Oy. I will try to reconstruct it and find the error of my ways.

Thanks, dclive, you've been a real support and I appreciate it!

 

[ToXiCRaGE]

Hi everyone,

I know that this topic is closed but I have a similar problem and didn't feel the need for creating a new thread.

I am running XP Pro and my system is also painfully slow after I reboot it. Before I get into the desktop (when I am on the blue 'welcome' XP screen) the system beeps, like it is posting again. Then windows continues into desktop and after few seconds I see the icons, however, I never see the start bar anymore.

Few days ago I have installed Roxio 9 and I have noticed that the program made some changes to the registry among few other things. I know that most likely Roxio is the source of my problem but here is the twist: I can't uninstall it!. Every time I am in windows I can run basic apps like Firefox or winamp, however, winamp will not play any mp3s. Also, I cannot copy and paste any files as well and cannot scan my HDs with Norton (as if they were not accessible). I can,however, see all my drives, browse through them and maybe even open some programs.

Any ideas of how I can regain the control of my desktop? I have tried many things in Safe Mode like uninstalling Roxio but the OS does not allow me (it says something similar to "the program you are trying to uninstall was not 'registered' in Add/Remove Programs - although it is clearly showing); safe mode right now is pretty useless for me.

I have also done the whole MSCONFIG configuration and tried to run only MS apps but that did not help with regaining control over my desktop. I think that I will have to reinstall the OS (?).

If I decide to reinstall the OS by installing a 'new' copy over the existing one, will I still have access to my 'old' files? I have few files on the desktop which I would like to keep. After I salvage those files I will do another 'fresh' installation to make sure everything is done properly.

Any thoughts of what should I do? I am not afraid of the work involved in the OS re-installation but my main goal is to be able to copy/paste my desktop files onto another HD (then nuke and pave the main HD).

Cheers!

 

[Smilin]

You are loading items from your registry Run key and Startup folder at that time. Also, any drivers/services set to a start type 2 (automatic) are being started about the time your logon screen appears. Any that take a while to get going may still be starting while you are waiting on your desktop.

Msconfig.exe FTW!!!