Long Pause Before Login

[Akuma]

When ever I boot the computer the will go through the post screen and 'loading windows' screen without any problem. Usually the screen goes black for a second then goes to the login screen. But for a the last couple days the black screen stays there for around 30 seconds before finally going to the login screen. Any ideas of how to fix this without reinstalling Windows?

Specs:
Windows XP Home
Athlon XP 2500+
Abit NF7-S
512MB Mushkin Blue PC3200

 

[Zardoz]

it's prolly going to be a network or a program taking longer to load, problem.... Have you loaded anything new or made network changes?

 

[oROEchimaru]

their are two things that have fixed this for me.

1. go to your harddrive in my computer, right click "properties", then go to tools. click "check now" and the two check boxxes. follow the directions, which means restart your computer. so from here let scandisk run for how ever long it takes and hopefully it finds some weird files that were pausing your windows login.

2. the second option would be to check for spyware, get spybot from www.downloads.com and also try going to start menu, run, msconfig, and in startup uncheck weird programs that you know are not system components or things you like using.

goodluck

 

[Akuma]

Well we tried all of those spyware removing programs, removed unused start up programs, and reinstalled Windows and it still pauses.

Could it be a hardware problem?

 

[2Busy]

It sounds like is is checking for network tasks before allowing login. If memory serves me correctly this can be disabled, thus speeding up your login.

 

[Ravenrex]

This Speeds Up/Eliminates looking for Network Tasks but it is for when you explore your hard drive, not before login.

Delays before login could be due to the DHCP client searching for a DHCP server and waiting for an address. Are you running DHCP? If so is it configured correctly?

The only other thing could be some sort of spyware or virus.