System takes forever to load and fill in icons on destop WHY?

[Guest J Tinsby]

A friend recently formatted his HD and re installed XP Pro, there are

only about 20 or less processes running. Yet when he boots up, it

takes a long time for the icons on the desktop to fill in and the

taskbar is all blue. Finally after the icons fill in, then the taskbar

starts to fill in a section at a time from left to right.

 

Once all this is done, he tells me the system seems to run fine and

isn't sluggish. He's run virus scanners, spyware programs SFC and

defrag etc all to no avail. He does have SP3 installed but the system

had this trouble prior to the install.

 

Anyone have any ideas?

 

Thanks in advance to all who reply!

 

J T

[Guest windsurferLA]

Re: System takes forever to load and fill in icons on destop WHY?

 

REPLY AT BOTTOM

J Tinsby wrote:

> A friend recently formatted his HD and re installed XP Pro, there are

> only about 20 or less processes running. Yet when he boots up, it

> takes a long time for the icons on the desktop to fill in and the

> taskbar is all blue. Finally after the icons fill in, then the taskbar

> starts to fill in a section at a time from left to right.

>

> Once all this is done, he tells me the system seems to run fine and

> isn't sluggish. He's run virus scanners, spyware programs SFC and

> defrag etc all to no avail. He does have SP3 installed but the system

> had this trouble prior to the install.

>

> Anyone have any ideas?

>

> Thanks in advance to all who reply!

>

> J T

I've had similar problems. Here are some of the things I've looked into

to cut down the start up time. You may need to research how to disable

these items.

 

NETWORKS Some WinXP settings call for it to check on Network connections

before starting. If it cannot quickly verify those connections, perhaps

because one or more of the networked computers is turned off, there will

be a delay until the process times out.

 

SOFTWARE UPDATES - Windows as well as certain Virus protection programs

can be set to check for call back to the mother-ship for updates each

and every time the machine is turned on. If the machine cannot quickly

download those updates and install those updates, there will be delay

until the process times out.

 

VIRUS SCAN - Some virus protection programs can be set to run a virus

scan each and every time the machine is turned on. Machine start-up is

delayed until the virus scan is complete.

 

INDEX SCAN WINDOWS- Windows includes an application designed to speed up

hard drive searches. In my experience, and that of many others, all it

does is slow down the machine. Make sure that automatic updates to the

INDEXing service is turned off, otherwise you may be forced to wait

until the index update is completed.

 

INDEX SCAN OTHERS - I could not operate efficiently without Copernic or

an equivalent file indexing program, but sometimes it gets mixed up and

doesn't recede into the background when I'm trying to use other

applications. I don't use an image indexing application (Picasa) or a

music/song indexing application, but they too need to be considered. You

need to make sure that these indexing applications are not set to

automatically update their indexes on start-up.

 

I do hope this helps. WindsurferLA

[Guest Kelly]

Re: System takes forever to load and fill in icons on destop WHY?

 

You may have answered your own question. :o)

20 processes and/or applications running - is most likely the cause.

 

Go to Start/Run/Msconfig - disable what is not really needed then reboot.

 

To find out what is running: See line 261 -

http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_tweaks.htm

 

Also merge line 157.

 

Good luck and keep us posted.

 

 

--

 

All the Best,

Kelly (MS-MVP/DTS&XP)

 

Taskbar Repair Tool Plus!

http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/taskbarplus!.htm

 

 

"J Tinsby" <reply@thegroup.org> wrote in message

news:2imo241rqms5mnq3m3haabn78p4760k15n@4ax.com...

>A friend recently formatted his HD and re installed XP Pro, there are

> only about 20 or less processes running. Yet when he boots up, it

> takes a long time for the icons on the desktop to fill in and the

> taskbar is all blue. Finally after the icons fill in, then the taskbar

> starts to fill in a section at a time from left to right.

>

> Once all this is done, he tells me the system seems to run fine and

> isn't sluggish. He's run virus scanners, spyware programs SFC and

> defrag etc all to no avail. He does have SP3 installed but the system

> had this trouble prior to the install.

>

> Anyone have any ideas?

>

> Thanks in advance to all who reply!

>

> J T

[Guest Ken Blake, MVP]

Re: System takes forever to load and fill in icons on destop WHY?

 

On Thu, 15 May 2008 11:50:48 -0400, J Tinsby <reply@thegroup.org>

wrote:

> A friend recently formatted his HD and re installed XP Pro, there are

> only about 20 or less processes running. Yet when he boots up, it

> takes a long time for the icons on the desktop to fill in and the

> taskbar is all blue. Finally after the icons fill in, then the taskbar

> starts to fill in a section at a time from left to right.

>

> Once all this is done, he tells me the system seems to run fine and

> isn't sluggish. He's run virus scanners, spyware programs SFC and

> defrag etc all to no avail. He does have SP3 installed but the system

> had this trouble prior to the install.

 

 

First, exactly how long is this "long time" you're talking about?

 

My personal view is that the attention many people pay to how long it

takes to boot is unwarranted. Assuming that the computer's speed is

otherwise satisfactory, it may not be worth worrying about. Most

people start their computers once a day or even less frequently. In

the overall scheme of things, even a few minutes to start up isn't

very important. Personally I power on my computer when I get up in the

morning, then go get my coffee. When I come back, it's done booting. I

don't know how long it took to boot and I don't care.

 

However if you do want to address it, it may be because of what

programs start automatically, and you may want to stop some of them

from starting that way. On each program you don't want to start

automatically, check its Options to see if it has the choice not to

start (make sure you actually choose the option not to run it, not

just a "don't show icon" option). Many can easily and best be stopped

that way. If that doesn't work, run MSCONFIG from the Start | Run

line, and on the Startup tab, uncheck the programs you don't want to

start automatically.

 

However, if I were you, I wouldn't do this just for the purpose of

running the minimum number of programs. Despite what many people tell

you, you should be concerned, not with how *many* of these programs

you run, but *which*. Some of them can hurt performance severely, but

others have no effect on performance.

 

Don't just stop programs from running willy-nilly. What you should do

is determine what each program is, what its value is to you, and what

the cost in performance is of its running all the time. You can get

more information about these at

http://castlecops.com/StartupList.html. If you can't find it there,

try google searches and ask about specifics here.

 

Once you have that information, you can make an intelligent informed

decision about what you want to keep and what you want to get rid of.

 

--

Ken Blake, Microsoft MVP - Windows Desktop Experience

Please Reply to the Newsgroup

[Guest Bill in Co.]

Re: System takes forever to load and fill in icons on destop WHY?

 

20 processes running is considered high??? Wow. I've got 40 after

bootup, and I thought I was on the LOW side. (these include the antivirus,

ad blockers, and things like that)

 

Kelly wrote:

> You may have answered your own question. :o)

> 20 processes and/or applications running - is most likely the cause.

>

> Go to Start/Run/Msconfig - disable what is not really needed then reboot.

>

> To find out what is running: See line 261 -

> http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_tweaks.htm

>

> Also merge line 157.

>

> Good luck and keep us posted.

>

>

> --

>

> All the Best,

> Kelly (MS-MVP/DTS&XP)

>

> Taskbar Repair Tool Plus!

> http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/taskbarplus!.htm

>

>

> "J Tinsby" <reply@thegroup.org> wrote in message

> news:2imo241rqms5mnq3m3haabn78p4760k15n@4ax.com...

>> A friend recently formatted his HD and re installed XP Pro, there are

>> only about 20 or less processes running. Yet when he boots up, it

>> takes a long time for the icons on the desktop to fill in and the

>> taskbar is all blue. Finally after the icons fill in, then the taskbar

>> starts to fill in a section at a time from left to right.

>>

>> Once all this is done, he tells me the system seems to run fine and

>> isn't sluggish. He's run virus scanners, spyware programs SFC and

>> defrag etc all to no avail. He does have SP3 installed but the system

>> had this trouble prior to the install.

>>

>> Anyone have any ideas?

>>

>> Thanks in advance to all who reply!

>>

>> J T

[Guest Nonny]

Re: System takes forever to load and fill in icons on destop WHY?

 

On Thu, 15 May 2008 14:19:17 -0600, "Bill in Co."

<not_really_here@earthlink.net> wrote:

>20 processes running is considered high??? Wow. I've got 40 after

>bootup, and I thought I was on the LOW side. (these include the antivirus,

>ad blockers, and things like that)

 

I completely agree.

 

I'd gotten mine down to about 40 before I installed Vista. I

could have gotten it down to close to 20 if I ran NOTHING

that was checked in MSCONFIG and if I deleted everything in

Startup.

 

Note that I had about half of "services" either disabled or on

manual too.

>Kelly wrote:

>> You may have answered your own question. :o)

>> 20 processes and/or applications running - is most likely the cause.

>>

>> Go to Start/Run/Msconfig - disable what is not really needed then reboot.

>>

>> To find out what is running: See line 261 -

>> http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_tweaks.htm

>>

>> Also merge line 157.

>>

>> Good luck and keep us posted.

>>

>>

>> --

>>

>> All the Best,

>> Kelly (MS-MVP/DTS&XP)

>>

>> Taskbar Repair Tool Plus!

>> http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/taskbarplus!.htm

>>

>>

>> "J Tinsby" <reply@thegroup.org> wrote in message

>> news:2imo241rqms5mnq3m3haabn78p4760k15n@4ax.com...

>>> A friend recently formatted his HD and re installed XP Pro, there are

>>> only about 20 or less processes running. Yet when he boots up, it

>>> takes a long time for the icons on the desktop to fill in and the

>>> taskbar is all blue. Finally after the icons fill in, then the taskbar

>>> starts to fill in a section at a time from left to right.

>>>

>>> Once all this is done, he tells me the system seems to run fine and

>>> isn't sluggish. He's run virus scanners, spyware programs SFC and

>>> defrag etc all to no avail. He does have SP3 installed but the system

>>> had this trouble prior to the install.

>>>

>>> Anyone have any ideas?

>>>

>>> Thanks in advance to all who reply!

>>>

>>> J T

>