Windows XP gets stuck on the Welcome screen

[Gaidal]

Hey guys.

Anyway I had this weird problem that cropped up over the weekend. Nothing new was installed or changed to my knowledge but every since then, whenever I restart or cold boot my computer, I get hung up for at least 2 minutes at the "Welcome" screen in Windows XP.

Eventually however, it does get past that screen and everything works fine until I decide to restart again. It used to just fly right by that so I'm not sure exactly what changed. I am hooked into a LAN so I don't know if it's having trouble pinging a DCHP but isn't that supposed to happen before you get that far in the booting process?

Anyway I appreciate your guys input. Thanks in advance!

 

[minendo]

I think you may be right in your idea that it is taking awhile to ping a DHCP. You may want to just test it out by specifying an IP on the computer and see if that increases boot time at all. Let me know if that helps. I will currently do a few searches and see if I can come up with any other ideas as to what may be causing the problem. Could you please do me a favor and post your system specs?

 

[Gaidal]

Oh sorry, I usually do post my system specs!

AMD T-bird 950
ASUS A7V
256 MB PC133 RAM (Kingston I think)
40.0 GP 7200 RPM Maxtor DiamondMax Hard Drive
Geforce 2 GTS
Sound Blaster Live! Platinum
Pioneer 16X DVD
3Com Ethernet Adapter (not entirely sure what kind it's been so long)
3Com/USR 56k Modem

Anyway I see how you can specify your own IP address and subnet and all that, but I'm not sure exactly what to put in there. Should I just take all of the information the DHCP (i.e. all my current IP config) gave me and put it in there?

 

[minendo]

<< Anyway I see how you can specify your own IP address and subnet and all that, but I'm not sure exactly what to put in there. Should I just take all of the information the DHCP (i.e. all my current IP config) gave me and put it in there? >>


That is what I would try.

 

[tyee]

You might want to go into MSCONFIG and uncheck everything in your start up. Might be a program wanting to start while XP is loading

 

[JustinLerner]

Whenever a service has problems at boot/startup it waits longer (times out) and then continues. Every other service which is dependent upon that failed service does the same (and also produces an event error.) Check your Event Viewer, this gives clues.

This problem is often a DNS related problem caused when there are internal DSL/cable modems in PCs.
In the Network and Dial-Up Connections icon (in the Control Panel), select the menu item for Advanced --> Advanced Settings.
In the Adapter and Bindings tab, change the WAN connection (or dial-up) so that it is at the top of the list. Your Local Area Connection should be at the bottom of the list and if there is a bridge it should be midway between the two. (This is a good way to correct this problem and does not apply if you have a local DNS server.)

-- Clues to the problems: If you have an internal DSL/cable modem then when you type ipconfig /all you will see something like some IP addresses with 169.xxx.xxx.xxx for the bridge and the Local Area Connection. This indicates that the bridge and Local Area Connection can't receive IP addresses through the DHCP service and also indicates that there is problem with the Adapter and Bindings order for DNS resolution -- DNS client can't see DNS server specified so it waits.
(I've heard that DHCP failure will not pause or delay an XP system, only Windows 2000.)

 

[chaswood]

The BootVis utility from Microsoft will tell you what your problem is. It is used to diagnose booting problems and improve boot times. You can download it from the MS XP site.