XP loading stops for a minute and goes again.

[uglyjack]

Howdy. You see, when I am booting my system it gets to my desktop, shows my wallpaper and then my taskbar shows up, but none of the desktop icons. And when I try to click through to something on my taskbar the system stutters and never gets that command across...but about a minute or two later everything will kick in like nothing ever happened. There are no items in the start up, only 20 processes are going. The CPU usages is 0-2% during this "lock-up."

I am running WinXP Home, AMD1900+, 512 DDR. Hmm, oh, and this just didnt happened after i installed stuff. I was running my system for about three days, and since the first day i havent loaded anything new. Any help is greatly appreciated, thanks.

 

[Damascus]

I heard that that's normal for XP. XP apparently doesn't load everything into memory before showing you
the desktop, just to make it look like it boots fast. Those bastards.

 

[uglyjack]

Really, hmm. ..normal even if it booted without the half before, and my other computer with XP never has done it.? I timed it 1minute 11 seconds...
thanks.

 

[altonb1]

I don't know if the program is compatible with XP, but look for a program called Boot Log Analyzer in your favorite search engine. In Win 9x, you can boot the system up so that it creates a bootlog.txt file. This program will look at the file and analyze the cause of delays during boot. If it works on XP, it will show the device(s) that is causing the freeze. If XP does not have that option, I have no idea.

Do you have a broadband connection? TCP/IP looks for a network if a broadband connection is present using DHCP. Try assigning 192.168.1.10/subnet 255.255.255.0 as your NIC's IP and see if that fixes the problem.

 

[wjsulliv]

Sometimes XP hangs as it initializes your network connections and IP address.

In Win 9x, you wait while the network initializes before it takes you into windows. I.e. when you get into windows the network is up and running.

In Win 2k and XP, it takes you into windows and then finishes network initializations. I.e. you can't access the network the instant you are in windows. Sometimes this can take 2 minuets before its fully up and you system acts normally.

Depending on your setup you can cut down that time by assigning your computer a static IP address. I.e. don't let it search the network to find an available IP address, specify one. However, this is not always the best answer, if you are on a network, you may need to search, otherwise you might need to statically assign all the IP's on the network.

My desktop was sluggish running XP Pro for the first minuet or so, while it searched for other (currently in use) IP's on my home network. However, usually it is the only machine on teh network, and I wanted to use it as my ICS machine. So I set up ICS, which set up the static IP address, etc. and now its up instantly.

If you don't have a NIC, then sorry to have waisted your time.

 

[uglyjack]

Well... I am not on a network. but i do have nic.
1. disabled nic
2. disable 1394 firenet
3. disabled windows messenger load on start up
4. defragged
5. used bootvis.exe (microsofts boot analyzer)
Those are steps i found from around the 'net. None of which have worked, i have downloaded Boot Log Analyzer, but it says it works by reading the bootlog.txt (which im not sure if XP creates, because there isnt one on my computer right now), but i will check the F8 action during start up. BUT a positive thing is that bootvis.exe tells me that Logon and Service took 118.63 seconds(is this normal), and during roughly 100 seconds of that there is zero CPU activity, which is what i get during the halt, infact during that whole time everything just about stops then kicks in again later...I am downloading the windows updates that i am missing. Perhaps this will help someone else in the future. and its not really sluggish but more of nothing happenin and nothing that will kick it into gear...

Thanks for the help so far, and no time of mine has been wasted.