Weird problem in XP that only Task Manager seems to fix...

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Paithar

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Jul 17, 2003
Messages
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Ok. This is concerning the rig in my sig. I recently got a new hard drive and made it my C drive. I did a fresh install of everything, OS, Games, apps. Nothing was from a backup of any sort. Here's the problem.

I have 5 different users accounts on my pc and this does not happen in my account, only in the other 4. Sometimes when they get on to their account, after Windows XP finishes loading, they can't do anything. They can't click on any icons, move any icons, start up any apps or games, nothing. That is until they start up Task Manager by pressing ctrl, alt, del keys. Once Task Manager starts up they're good to go. They can even close Task Manager at that point and continue to work with no more problems.

I've never encountered this before and I've installed Windows literally hundreds of times for various family and friends as well as for myself. It kind of sounds to me like something is trying to start but just not finishing. The problem is, I have not idea what it could be or how to find out what it could be. One thing I just now thought about and haven't looked at yet are the system log files. I don't know why I never looked there but barring anything obvious there has anyone else had this problem? Have any ideas for me?

Thanks
 
Bizarre. Were there useable partitions on this HDD when you put it in or were did you have to create partition(s) yourself? Also, I assume these users aren't Administrators, correct? Not that being an admin should have any bearing on things at that point.
 
It was brand new hard drive given to me, completely unformatted and what not because it was still in it's box with plastic around it. It's the 120GB HD in my sig.

At the moment, just because I've been to lazy to actually change them, the other users are admins but then again all of them but one was an admin before on my old hard drive and I didn't have this problem.

If the logs don't tell me anything then I'll just live with it until I get annoyed enough to reformat and reinstall again. Or until I upgrade my system, hopefully later this summer.

For some reason this latest install has been my weirdest install ever. This wasn't the only problem I had and all of the problems I have had have been with all of the other users accounts, never with my own account. Right after first installing XP, the other users at first couldn't move any icons around the screen nor could the create new shortcuts on the desktop yet they could start up apps and do everything else. Also, as soon as each one would log in Windows would start up Notepad with a file called desktop.ini. This wasn't part of the startup folder. In fact I had to go inside the registry to find where it was loading that. I did seem to find out that the desktop.ini file was related to the previous problem of not being able to move icons or create shortcuts because as soon as I had it not load that file in Notepad upon startup and I moved the file from each persons My Documents folder they were able to move icons and create shortcuts. I had never seen those problems before either.

It's been a weird install to say the least.
 
Perhaps something with networking? I had a Dell that would do this all the time, but it only had one account.
 
Have you run independent system tests at this point to see if you've lost something while installing that new HDD? Memtest 86+? Prime95? get the Ultimate Boot CD to get that stuff independent of a Windows install.
 
If you want to see what's running, go to start-->run-->msconfig, and look in the startup tab. Don't disable anything you're not sure about.

Besides that, I also recommend testing your HDD's integrity like Wolf said.

Good luck!
 
Yeah, been kind of busy the last couple of days at home and haven't had time to even get on my computer. I plan to run memtest tonight though just to be sure that's ok. I do know that SMART is reporting the hard drive to be in full health but I'm not sure I fully trust SMART to tell me everything.

As for networking being the problem I kind of doubt it. I don't have a network set up at home, although I do need to get one set up with my laptop. The only networking stuff I have set up is for my connection to the internet itself. Basically, everything is set up exactly the way it was before with the old hard drive except that I'm running new video drivers and sound drivers. I didn't realize before with the old drive that I hadn't gone and downloaded new drivers for quite some time. I don't remember what version I was running of the nvidia drivers but there was quite a bit of difference in version numbers from them to the latest ones. Hmmm! Maybe I should try loading some slightly older nvidia drivers and see if that's the problem.

Anyway, for now it's only annoying and with any luck that's the worst it'll be if I can't figure it out. Hopefully I'll be able to build myself a new pc later in the summer.

Thanks for the info everyone.
 
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