Slight hang on boot up

riptide

Start PC (WinXP), enter password... listen to jingle. Then freeze for 20 seconds just showing the logon screen after the password has been accepted... then my desktop background appears but no tray, start button or icons. I can open task manager and see that nothing is hogging CPU resources or Ram. Hardrive stops seeking for a time also. This remains hung for another 20 seconds ... then icons appear and startup continues as quick as ever. Ironically the irritating thing is that this does not happen all the time and only happens I'd say 40% of startups so may prove to be difficult to troubleshoot.
I'll try to resist been spoon fed the steps to fix it and save you guys from scrathing your head, but I would like to know of some good tools to see whats happening in the background. How about I use the 'xxxxmon' series of tools from sysinternals? Can i get the likes of Regmon, Process monitor and Hardrive monitor to run at the logon stage (pre startup). I suppose a couple of line entries in boot.ini might do the trick?
Or is there another tool to help. I have run all my spyware/antivirus tools.. Ad aware, Spysweeper, Spybot, Regcleaner, PcCillin housecall (web based), Norton Enterprise, Zonealarm scanner, System Mechanic reg cleaner and scanner with no result. It wouls almost appear like a dodgy peripheal (spelling goes at 3:15am) or PCI. I know previously, my older board used to hang a little on startup if the wireless card was enabled.
I just kinda need a little direction. I know some people will suggest uninstalling recent programs untill the problem ceases, but that is time consuming and I will resort to that near the end (of my patience):)

riptide

Any ideas?

riptide

I think I have it. Ashampoo XPpowerup was causing the hangs... i think. Uninstalled it and 2 boots later, no hangs.

retrospect

you could try an MSCONFIG and stop one thing at a time from starting up ,see if that helps .

SouperComputer

you could also use bootvis to monitor the startup process.

riptide

Its not Ashampoo. Got a hang today. Tried Bootvis... not telling me a whole lot. Its very much geared to look at the resume function.
My have to try a variation of msconfig later.

**Timbuk2**

I recomend you use AutoRuns to see what is running. If you see something that you could do without, disable it (remember you can always enable it again if something does not go right without it)

Or if you are unsure whether you need a startup process or not visit this great site: http://www.sysinfo.org/startuplist.php

You can type in the process name and the site will give a description of your process, and whether it is added by a trojan, virus or worm, and it will tell you that you can delete it, delete it if you want, or that you must have it, and it will tell you if it is added by a virus/trojan to delete immediatly

EDIT: If you want you could post a screenshot up here and some willing boardsters will be willing to help you

riptide

**Timbuk2** wrote:

I recomend you use AutoRuns to see what is running. If you see something that you could do without, disable it (remember you can always enable it again if something does not go right without it)

Or if you are unsure whether you need a startup process or not visit this great site: http://www.sysinfo.org/startuplist.php

You can type in the process name and the site will give a description of your process, and whether it is added by a trojan, virus or worm, and it will tell you that you can delete it, delete it if you want, or that you must have it, and it will tell you if it is added by a virus/trojan to delete immediatly

EDIT: If you want you could post a screenshot up here and some willing boardsters will be willing to help you

Thats done already. Nothing is virus/trojan like on the list. I have restored the registry to an earlier date. And 2 boots later no hangs. But I'm off to reboot.

riptide

Here goes anyways... The first picture shows task manager right after logon screen. This is where she hangs.

The second is after everything is booted and stable.

EDIT: it hung again, registry restore did nothing.

riptide

Souper.. you may have more experience at Bootvis than I have... so I know loading up a few screenshots of it. The driver delay only requires one shot in the first pic because there is nothing much to report higher in the graph. The following 2 show all the processes.
Anyways, a 'Bad Boot' trace is been processed at the moment (takes a while, and crashes sometimes!!)

riptide

And the 'Bad Boot'. Notice the times now on the x axis. As above, there is only one shot of the driver hang graph. There is nothing much to see upon scrolling upwards. I have 2 extra pics to show all processes. Any ideas?