BleepingComputer.com: Slow Startup and Shutdown (XP Home SP2)

I'm using Windows XP Home service pack 2.

For the last week or so my comptuer has been having very slow startup and shutdown. On shutdown, it hangs at "Saving your settings" for a couple of minutes, and at startup, there is a 3-minute lag between the desktop background appearing and the actual icons and taskbar showing up. Once it starts up, it seems to be working fine.

I've run Avast full scan, Malware Bytes and Spybot (all fully up to date) in Safe Mode and none of them found anything. A few months ago I had a problem with a virus which I got help for on this forum :D , and I don't know for sure this isn't being caused by a similar problem but I decided to post here first.

Computer works fine in Safe Mode, no lag at all.

The slow shutdown was fixed by Microsoft's User Profile Hive Cleanup Service:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details...;displaylang=en

However, startup is still slow, and I'm assuming the two problems are related. Checking in Event Viewer under System, there is an approximately 3 minute lag between Tcpip connection and Terminal Services starting. Here are the Event Viewer entries:

Event Type: Information
Event Source: Tcpip
Event Category: None
Event ID: 4201
Date: 7/26/2010
Time: 8:38:01 AM
User: N/A
Computer: CHARLES-3F3A0E0
Description:
The system detected that network adapter \DEVICE\TCPIP_{1AC6CA40-6786-4781-B25B-C9FB69603409} was connected to the network, and has initiated normal operation over the network adapter.

Event Type: Information
Event Source: Service Control Manager
Event Category: None
Event ID: 7036
Date: 7/26/2010
Time: 8:41:02 AM
User: N/A
Computer: CHARLES-3F3A0E0
Description:
The Terminal Services service entered the running state.

Note the 3 minute pause between them.

I don't know much about computers so I'm kind of lost about what to do. Is there a way I can see which specific service(s) are causing the lag?

I have also been having a problem with my Internet connection for the last few days (it keeps turning off and restarting every once in a while). I don't know if those things are related.

EDIT: Just tried a System Restore to a point well before this started happening and it didn't fix the problem. In my boot log there are six or seven drivers that are listed as "Did not load".

Does anybody have any advice?

Could this be related to (or causing?) the problems I'm having with my internet connection?

This post has been edited by ossilix: 26 July 2010 - 11:26 AM

ossilix

Welcome back to Bleeping computer

Is your NIC integrated with your motherboard or a Standalone Card?

What is restarting the modem or the card

Try these steps in http://support.microsoft.com/kb/325487

Please note that Microsoft stop supporting Service Pack 2 on July 13 2010. So try updating your Service Pack to 3 that may help you in this situation because after sp3 installs you would get updates

If the link provided didnt work or help. Please reply back and we will try more networking commands

coxchris, on Jul 26 2010, 11:37 AM, said:

I believe it's a standalone card.

Quote

The modem

Quote

Yes, I was planning to update to SP3 but wanted to defrag and run antivirus/antispyware first, then I discovered the lag problem while doing that. :-(

We have a technician from my ISP coming today and I'm going to see if they can figure out what's wrong and if it's my computer or their service that's causing the problems.

Try these step

Go to command prompt

tpye in:

tracert google.com

the first hop is your NIC talking to your Modem

as a example this is the standard tracert to google
Microsoft Windows [Version 6.1.7600]
Copyright © 2009 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

C:\Users\Chris>tracert google.com

Tracing route to google.com [72.14.204.147]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 2 ms 1 ms 1 ms 192.168.1.1
2 * * * Request timed out.
3 1647 ms 879 ms 719 ms
4 967 ms 689 ms 739 ms

5 738 ms 849 ms 738 ms

6 977 ms 918 ms 869 ms
7 827 ms 688 ms 789 ms
8 858 ms 739 ms 809 ms
9 767 ms 879 ms 789 ms
10 778 ms 938 ms 1068 ms
11 1048 ms 999 ms 749 ms
12 988 ms 899 ms 838 ms
13 886 ms 759 ms 859 ms
14 797 ms 889 ms 759 ms
15 778 ms 789 ms 759 ms
16 807 ms 788 ms 1019 ms
17 707 ms 868 ms 1020 ms
18 766 ms 949 ms 898 ms
19 914 ms 819 ms 769 ms
20 906 ms 1079 ms 1069 ms
21 1056 ms 858 ms 739 ms

Trace complete.

C:\Users\Chris>

If you are receiving high ms on the first hop like 10ms 10ms 10ms than your NIC or cables are s dying the 2nd hop is a router/modem firewall usally the request times out like that 3-21 hops are traveling through your ISP system if you notices any hop that has a Request time out or * that means something is wrong. not necessary wrong if you have like * 100ms 97ms when that happens it usually means drop packets.

I remove the IP of my ISP service on purpose

Also if you ping 127.0.0.1

that is your loop back address if they ping successfully than the OS is talking to your NIC Card if not your NIC is dying or drivers

This post has been edited by coxchris: 26 July 2010 - 12:45 PM

Thanks! Tracert to google and ping to 127.0.0.1 work fine.

Once the computer finishes startup everything works fine, no lag. I don't think the slow startup is related to the modem repeatedly cutting out. My ISP has been having an "outage" and the modem has been solid since this morning, but startup is still slow.

Looking in Event Viewer, it's still lagging between TCPIP and Terminal Services. It stalls for exactly 3 minutes 1 second almost every time (occasionally a few secs more), which makes me wonder if something is just timing out?

I tried msconfig Diagnostic Startup and Selective Startup with only "Load System Services" disabled and both worked fine, no lag in startup at all. So I'm assuming it's a service that's causing this?

I also tried msconfig Selective Startup with Terminal Services disabled but it still lags 3 minutes; same thing when I disabled the TCP/IP service, it still lags 3 minutes.

Any advice on where to look for the problem? I guess I can try disabling services one at a time until I find the problem but at 5 minutes a restart it's going to take a long time so if there's an easier way that would be great lol

Is it worth posting on the Am I Infected board to rule out malware?

Try cleaning your computer with CCleaner it will delete all the bad garbage files See if that helps your start up times. [/b] DO NOT use the registry cleaner in that program[/b]

Process Explorer is nice program and auto run. What these programs do is they analyze your Processes and put them into a list and than we can analyze it

You can save it into a Text document or sceenshot it for us.

What did your ISP technician say about this problem if he did troubleshoot this?


Is it worth posting on the Am I Infected board to rule out malware?
I don't think so if the mods did see this thread as malware related they would move it to the appropriated forum. Were on the right track here you stated a service causing the problem.

coxchris, on Jul 27 2010, 12:54 AM, said:

I do use CCleaner regularly, unfortunately I have used the registry cleaner. I didn't know it was bad to use it! However the only thing it cleaned off around the time this started happening was the Adobe Acrobat default icon. I could try adding it back in, but I also tried System Restore to a point before I used the registry cleaner and it didn't make a difference so I don't think it's related to the registry (at least not to the entry CCleaner removed).

I'll try getting the list from Process Explorer and post it. Thanks!

I'm not sure if I was clear about this, I've tried Selective Startup and different combinations of disabling the systems that appear in Event Viewer after the 3 minute lag, and so far none of them have made a difference. But it's definitely a System Service. Would it help to post a more complete log from the Event Viewer?

Quote

They never showed up. :-|

yes It will help

Information entry are ok
Waring/Critical/Errors are most crucial to correct. so post the event IDs and I will try to find specific information about them.

"defrag and run antivirus/antispyware first, then I discovered the lag problem while doing that. :-("

Did you ever completed that defrag process (defragger is an alternative defrag program) its free and easy to use

Have you run chkdsk c: in the command prompt before chkdsk verify the file system and repairs any bad sectors or blocks.

Please run that in read only mode

if at the end of the test it say "Windows has found problems with the file system Please use /f switch to fix these problems"

do the same procedure only add the /f and than say yes It will restart and go into a testing mode and repair any bad blocks and when its done it will restart in normal mode see this for ref http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315265


The reason why we dont like registry cleaners because they make problems to worst problems The registry is like a database if it get corrupt bad things will happen Now I use that registry in that program under caution.

hope that helps

IMO...there is little/no value in running chkdsk in read-only mode.

I suggest just running the chkdsk /r command, which includes the procedures done by chkdsk /f. The chkdsk /r command is the most exhaustive/thorough command to be used when running chkdsk.

FWIW: Support for SP2 has disappeared, I suggest that you update your system to SP3 and all (over 100 of them) critical updates issued since SP3 first appeared.

Louis

Thanks again guys!

I've been using Auslogics Disk Defrag but haven't defragged in a while, I've been cleaning files off the hard drive and was going to wait to do a full defrag after that was done.

Actually this was all in prepration to install SP3. My plan was to run full antivirus check, spyware checks, remove things from hard drive, then chkdsk, defrag, then install SP3, but I only got as far as antivirus/spyware and move stuff off hard drive before I really noticed the slow startup (I had been using hibernate during the process beforehand and hadn't restarted much).

Is it safe to upgrade to SP3 now, or better to wait until the problem is corrected? (That's why I haven't done it yet.) SP3 can be uninstalled pretty easily right?

Also is it better to install SP3 in safe mode?

<<Is it safe to upgrade to SP3 now,...>>

Interesting phrasing...I know that it's very unsafe not to have SP3 and all subsequent critical updates installed. I've never considered increased system vulnerability as a "safe" proposition.

Louis

hamluis, on Jul 28 2010, 06:02 PM, said:

I meant is it safe to do a major update while I'm having a problem with Windows, and is it safe to install SP3 before running chkdsk and defragging the hard drive?

Unfortunately I just ran Samsung's hard drive diagnostic tool and it found two "ECC Errors" and recommended erasing the hard drive. :-( I'm trying to find out how serious this is. Maybe it would be better to just install a new hard drive and start fresh with a new installation of Windows.

This post has been edited by ossilix: 28 July 2010 - 07:01 PM

If you ran the Samsung diagnostic on a Samsung hard drive...I would consider that conclusive proof of what the problem might be, if ECC errors are noted.

I suppose that you could try to wipe the drive, using the Samsung utility...and then reinstall Windows, if the drive is then useable.

Looks like much speculation took place that could have been possibly avoided by running the hard drive diagnostic as a preliminary step.

Louis