xp very very slow

**lurch** · 22nd May 2004

Please help, I am having a problem with my computer.....

I am running XP Pro, A 1.68GB cpu. and a g-force graphic card and 512mb ram.

The problem

When the computer is turned on, it starts up with all the normal stuff showing on the screen. It the screen then goes blank, there is no signs of life on the computer except for the power green light 'on' on the computer and the monitor. I have to wait for about 10 minutes before I get a chance to enter user password, enter password and the computer plays tune and states 'loading your personal settings' this takes about a minute to load, I then get a picture (the back ground picture) and a curser arrow, that moves freely across the screen with the movement of the mouse. It will stay like this for atleast 10 minutes before I get icons or a start bar. When I get the icons up they seem to work ok and reasonably quickly.

I have re-installed (repair) the XP Pro operating system. No difference.

Could it be a hardware or a software fault. I didn't realy want to format it and re-install if that does not solve the problem.

Please help all advice will be welcomed.

Many thanks.

Lurch

**BLUTO141** · 22nd May 2004

have you installed any new hardware, i had to update my motherboard bios to resolve a slow bootup problem, either that check for a virus or worm attack even though you say you did a restore that would'nt rid you of an infection.

**Pegasus** · 23rd May 2004

Could be hardware or software related.

I recently had a system that was exhibiting the same sort of problems with regards to boot up times etc, and it turned out to be the DVD drive that was the cause of it.

**lurch** · 23rd May 2004

Thanks for advice, I have run an antivirus program, McAffee, updated 2 days before scanning.

No virus was found.

I will format it and see what happens.

Many thanks

Lurch

**lurch** · 23rd May 2004

Hi mod, I have just fitted a new DVD drive, but it did work ok, for atleast a week before I started getting problems.

Thanks Paul

**lurch** · 25th May 2004

Thanks for advice, but I formatted the damn thing, now working fine. Don't know what was wrong, but it must have been a software problem.

Thanks Lurch

**debug77** · 25th May 2004

I've had this before. In my case it was that XP was switching the access mode for the hard drives to PIO mode. Apparently it doesnt this if fails to read/write from/to the drive X amount of times (no idea what value X is).

The way to fix this is to uninstall the drive in Device Manager (yep, even if its C drive!) and then it should detect new hard ware and install it, and reset this X count.

I did this and it's been fine ever since. Obviously if it keeps happening then you could have a hardware failure on the way.

There was a page on http://msdn.microsoft.com if it happens again and you don't fancy re-installing everything

Update: Here's the URL http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;817472

And X was 6 hehe