Pause on startup

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erorr404

Gawd
Joined
Jan 30, 2005
Messages
646
Every time I boot up, the computer loads windows just fine, except for about 2 minutes, the task bar (the whole bar on the bottom, whatever it's called) is frozen. I can't press start, quick launch, right click, etc. The desktop is not paused however, and task manager is functional. During this pause period many programs will not open or load. Also, the hard drive is not loading anything or doing any work during this time. After this pause period is over, the hard drive starts to load things quickly, and a few processes get added to the task manager process list. Everything works fine after that.
I think this started happening after I closed some process. How do I fix this?
 
First thing to do is goto

C:\windows\prefetch

and delete everything in it. Lemme know if that does it.

 
that helped a lot, the pause is still there but it's only for about 5-10 seconds.
 
Ok next goto Start, Run type in msconfig

Goto the startup tab:

Now this is all the stuff that loads when windoze starts up. Something in there is prolly laggin your system.

Uncheck em all, reboot and see if it works
If it does then you'll have to check them on one at a time and reboot till you find the culprit.

 
all of them? :eek:
aren't some of them valid windows processes? what i would like to do is uncheck everything that is not absolutely required by windows, i dont need anything at all on startup.
 
Sure thats fine too. If your running XP tho everything on the startup tab isnt ness. for windoze to run, that stuff is loaded in services. Just try to weed out the culprit.

Also how much ram are runnin an what os?

 
i have 1.5GB PC2700
yeah i just realized the startup ones weren't necessary processes. i unchecked them all, but there is still about a 10 second task bar freeze, where the HDD isn't loading anything or doing anything.
 
microcosm13 said:
Sure thats fine too. If your running XP tho everything on the startup tab isnt ness. for windoze to run, that stuff is loaded in services. Just try to weed out the culprit.

Also how much ram are runnin an what os?

Click to expand...
Some of those things in startup aren't necessary per say, but he likely wants some of them running. The suggestion to trim all of them is a bit overboard. I'd do them one at a time, that way you can actualy see which ones affect you, and how.
 
Phoenix86 said:
Some of those things in startup aren't necessary per say, but he likely wants some of them running. The suggestion to trim all of them is a bit overboard. I'd do them one at a time, that way you can actualy see which ones affect you, and how.
Click to expand...
Note that microcosm13 never suggested to leave all startup items permanently deselected. And to be fair, it's pretty much the same method as you suggest, just applied in reverse. Either way, you'll see which ones affect you, and how they affect you.

Your method has the drawback of incurring the 2 minute boot penalty for every startup item deselected until the culprit is finally found. And if the culprit isn't even a startup item, the OP won't know it until the startup list is entirely deselected, and a large amount of time wasted in the reboot process.

My experience is it's most efficient to uncheck them all, see if the problem is solved, and if so, start selectively adding startup items to find the culprit in the list.
 
MEfreak said:
Note that microcosm13 never suggested to leave all startup items permanently deselected. And to be fair, it's pretty much the same method as you suggest, just applied in reverse. Either way, you'll see which ones affect you, and how they affect you.

Your method has the drawback of incurring the 2 minute boot penalty for every startup item deselected until the culprit is finally found. And if the culprit isn't even a startup item, the OP won't know it until the startup list is entirely deselected, and a large amount of time wasted in the reboot process.

My experience is it's most efficient to uncheck them all, see if the problem is solved, and if so, start selectively adding startup items to find the culprit in the list.
Click to expand...

Agreed. But Now I think we're past the startup issue with msconfig, so we'll move along. The next thing I would check is your service list. Goto the services tab in msconfig, check the box at the bottom thats says 'Hide all Microsoft Services'. Take a look, see if you see anything odd, or you could try the method above of unchecking them all and seeing if it makes a difference. Now in this situation you could be disabling your anti virus, or something more important, so make sure to turn these back on when your done. Let us know.

 
the things i currently have are IIS Admin, NVIDIA Display Driver Service, Sandra Data Service, Sandra Service, Simple Mail and Transfer Protocol (SMTP), and World Wide Web Publishing. none of them are odd, but i'll try unchvecking all of them and report back.
 
the pause persists. (this time it was 10 seconds... it varies, sometimes it's 20, sometimes its 15)
 
Do you have any devices that might be initializing? A printer scanner etc?

 
MEfreak said:
Note that microcosm13 never suggested to leave all startup items permanently deselected. And to be fair, it's pretty much the same method as you suggest, just applied in reverse. Either way, you'll see which ones affect you, and how they affect you.

Your method has the drawback of incurring the 2 minute boot penalty for every startup item deselected until the culprit is finally found. And if the culprit isn't even a startup item, the OP won't know it until the startup list is entirely deselected, and a large amount of time wasted in the reboot process.

My experience is it's most efficient to uncheck them all, see if the problem is solved, and if so, start selectively adding startup items to find the culprit in the list.
Click to expand...
6 of one, half a dozen of the other. I didn't mean to imply he was throwing out the baby with the bath water. ;)

If you exclude common startup items, you can generally pick out the bad one faster (as it's normally an 'odd' service or startup item). Of course, his way tells you off the bat if it's a startup item or not in one try...

OP, also check your network setup, sometimes this is DNS related. Are you on a domain? Extra NICs in the system?
 
You two think we should have him get us a HJT log?
Maybe its some odd object starting and lagging?

 
Ok first thing is first. I want you to try the above suggestion with your network card. You could just go into device manager, and disable it altogether, and reboot. See if it still does it. My HJT option is a longshot at best, but we'll try it if we can't find anything else.

 
i usually reboot with all network devices disabled and still get the problem, but i'll try again.
 
erorr404 said:
i usually reboot with all network devices disabled and still get the problem, but i'll try again.
Click to expand...
wow, apparently i was wrong :eek: ^^
the network adapters are the problem.. both of them. the wireless PCI network adapter causes a 10-15 second delay and onboard Realtek ethernet thing causes a 60 second delay.
thanks a lot.
do you think updating drivers on them will solve it?
 
Thats a good place to start. It could be windoze is goin a bit batty with both nw adapters trying to init at the same time. Update the drivers and let us know.

 
my onboard ethernet's drivers are up to date, wireless i dont know, but the ethernet ones are the biggest problem since they are causing the longest pause.
 
Are they trying (and failing) to get a DHCP address?
(If they're set to DHCP, try giving them static information and see if that changes anything.)
 
The easy way to see if you've got DHCP problems is trying to Repair the connections. If it takes a long time or fails, that's your problem right there. If it's fast and works, it's probably something else.
 
If both adapters used <10 seconds, it's most likely not the source of a 60-second delay, agreed. :)
(Still, it takes <1 second for me, so 10 seconds still sounds a bit slow. Not enough to bother looking into it, though.)
 
10 seconds is sorta acceptable.... most of my machines will take anywhere from 3-5 seconds, on my 2k domain. I have NEVER seen one do a repair(maybe a /renew after a /release... but NEVER a repair in WinXP) in less than 1 second.

QJ
 
actually i just noticed.. the repair DOES take exactly as long as the pause on startup is.
the repair for the wireless takes 13 seconds, and it takes around that time on startup for the task bar to un-freeze when the wireless network connection is enabled.
when the onboard ethernet is enabled, it takes about a minute to un-freeze, and it does take 63 seconds for the repair operation to complete (and fail).
so, it looks like i do have DHCP problems?

heres some info that might be useful.. i dont think i set up my wired connection (dsl modem plugged into onboard LAN) correctly. in network connections, i must first enable "Local Area Connection" which is the Realtek 10/100 ethernet adapter, and only then can i dial a connection to connect to the internet by clicking on the broadband connection (that says WAN Miniport PPPOE).
this explains why the repair fails on the wired connection.. it doesn't necessarily mean im connected to the internet.
 
Try uninstalling the driver for the nic that's giving you the issue, and reinstalling.

 
i have the same issue as Erorr404, when i freshly install windows it boots normal but as soon as i install the nvidia network drivers i get that nice 60sec+ boot lag at the desktop it was very frustrating, i installed windows so much trying to figure it out, ive got my damn cd-key memorized lol.
 
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