XP pro hangs on "Applying computer settings" for an hour or more.

[Dubb]

I work in a small arch. office. One of my co-workers just got a new office pc, a dell precision 390 (e6300, 2GB ecc ram etc.) her former computer was running win2k.

we've gone through two of them now...things start out ok, then, after our tech people load all her old programs, emails and files, this starts happening on boot. It'll boot into safe mode just fine.

Ran spybot, new graphics drivers, etc...just can't find what's causing it. can't run macaffe in safe mode, so it may be a virus. Our tech people don't have a clue.

are there any good virus scanners that can be run from the web from safe mode? Might anything in the upgrade (both windows and office) that might royally bork the "applying computer settings" bit of startup. I suspect it's in the old files that the IT people copied over, but don't know where to start looking.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Smilin]

log on as a different user and see what happens.

Find out what group policies are being applied from the domain.

 

[jtvang125]

Check to see if "enable offline files" is turned off.

 

[Dubb]

update:

different user does the same thing, however....if you boot the computer without the network cable plugged in, it boots fine. Group policies is a good lead, but it's gotta something connected to this machine only - no other computers on the same domain (all using XP) do this.

 

[mechBgon]

can't run macaffe in safe mode, so it may be a virus. Our tech people don't have a clue.

Go to John's malware-removal guide and do a page search for "bloatware." This takes you to a writeup on how to run a full-blown manual McAfee scan using the latest beta DATs. Run it in Safe Mode With Command Prompt as suggested.

If that doesn't help, look at the network traffic. Is the system doggedly trying to transfer something from the server? Maybe she's got a few ripped DVDs in her profile or something?

 

[loup garou]

If it's on a domain, make sure doesn't have an outside DNS server set as the primary.

AKA, have your tech guy check the DNS settings.

 

[Dubb]

Google seems to be indicating that it's something to do with how it connects to the domain controller. trying to locate network shares?

I think our tech guys are morons, they said to send it back to dell. (for the second time)

 

[Smilin]

Originally posted by: loup garou
If it's on a domain, make sure doesn't have an outside DNS server set as the primary.

AKA, have your tech guy check the DNS settings.

:thumbsup:

Definately check that. Even if this isn't it, sending it back to Dell would be a complete waste of time. Your tech support guy's kung-fu is weak, grasshoppa.

 

[Dubb]

update.

you can log on as administrator just fine, but any normal user does this.

she had about 5 gigs of music in her profile...moved it out and it still did it.

 

[stash]

Have you checked the event logs yet?

 

[thirtythree]

As others have said, check the TCP/IP settings. Or have you?

If it is a local administrator and the other logins you tried are on the domain, that could still be the cause.

 

[hanoverphist]

Originally posted by: Dubb
update.

you can log on as administrator just fine, but any normal user does this.

she had about 5 gigs of music in her profile...moved it out and it still did it.

anything good?

 

[PotatoMAN]

Given you guys are on a domain you will probably want to contact the domain administrator to take a look. I have no idea how your domain is setup, and given you are probably an end-user you have little or no clue as to how the physical setup of the domain is. Past posts to have someone check out the DNS settings is a good start since Active Directory heavily depends on DNS requests. Couple of other tricks you can do:

Check out the event viewer to see if stuff is erroring out:
Start->Run->eventvwr

If that looks OK, then you will want to see if your computer is able to correctly get policy updates from the domain controller. Try:
Start->Run->cmd
Type: "gpupdate" at the command prompt.
If that takes a while, you probably have a network issue.

You may want to have your domain admin remove the computer from the domain and rejoin it locally.

You can also try a "gpupdate /sync" to try to force it to sync with the domain controller.

Again, these are all just shots in the dark given I have no clue as to how your domain/network is setup. My main assumption here is that you are on an Active Directory domain.

 

[Dubb]

Well, turned out to be the macaffe software that dell included. good for them.

DNS was fine, thought I mentioned that.

We don't acutally have a domain administrator...it seems to be whatever the guys who we contract IT to have cobbled together over the years.