Windows 7 - takes 10 minutes to log in?

[LukeM]

I have an Acer Aspire desktop at home which came with Windows 7 pre-installed. It was sold on the Currys website as being an ex-display model I believe.

 

It worked fine up until recently. It loads Windows fine and then when you get to the home screen to choose a user to log in as, when you click the user it takes 10 minutes to log in!!! What's really odd about it though is that when you finally log in, it works perfectly fine as normal with no hiccups.

 

Even more unusual is if a user then logs off and someone else logs on, it just goes through in under a minute as it would normally do and works as it would have worked before.

 

I have for now decided to leave it as it is, as once it's all logged in it is fine?

 

But just for the record I've done the following...

 

- Run msconfig to disable any unwanted/unnecessary background processes at startup

- Checked out the RAM, tried some alternatives - tightened them up, swapped them over as it's in a 1x1024 and 1x2048 configuration

- Created a restore disk and tried to repair it using that... but it finds no faults

- System restored

- Virus scan

 

It doesn't BSOD or anything like that... I can find no explanation for its behavior at all. It's not the end of the world if it doesn't get fixed, it's just a minor inconvenience. I heard it could be to do with an Automatic Update, but then a System Restore would've corrected that as it would've uninstalled the update...

 

Anyway the specs are:

- Windows 7 Home Premium

- 3GB RAM (1x1024, 1x2048)

- AMD X3 processor

- Security: COMODO Internet Security Pro

 

Then all the usual - IE8, Firefox, Google Chrome and AOL 9.5 are installed. Skype is installed and used frequently. Microsoft Office 2003 Student & Teacher Edition.

 

It's just a computer shared out for general use for email/Internet browsing and a bit of word processing, doing up a few spreadsheets here and there, Skype'ing and some other general day-to-day tasks?

 

I mean we put next to no demands on it what so ever. Wasn't sure if it was perhaps a bit of a bad sector on the hard drive but I've done a bit of cleaning on there as such - defragmented and disk cleanup has been run.

 

Any ideas?? :confused:

[Dalo Harkin]

The RAM is a very odd configuration and I would be looking at that first:-

 

1 and 2GB sticks require different voltages to run, Try removing the 1024 stick and running with only the 2gig one

 

(have you ever checked within windows that all 3gig shows)?

[Synapse]

Any chance Comodo is running a system scan when you start up and slowing everything down?

[LukeM]

Nope! It's configured exactly the same as my HP laptop and that doesn't experience this issue.

 

It's like... this screen is present for 10 minutes (I don't think a virus scanner would cause it):

 

http://img24.imageshack.us/img24/8675/windows7welcome.jpg

 

 

See? It's really annoying. It's not slow to boot. It's fine when the desktop is loaded. It's annoying. And it's really quick to log off/shut down and switch users too. But at first start up someone logging in for the first time? Nope. It's not networked. It's pretty standalone and just connected to a WiFi Modem Router to access the Internet. There's no other networked devices.

[Dalo Harkin]

Have you tried to remove a stick of RAM