Can anyone solve my years-old XP start-up mystery?!

Grateful for any tips on something that's not a problem as such but more of than an "annoyance", for over 3 years now! (Additionally grateful as I know no-one seems to care about good old XP these days!) All it is - I start up my PC and get the Windows desktop displayed. Not straight away, but maybe 20 secs. after display, the PC freezes for about 35 secs. (can't do a thing) then it's all fine. I've uninstalled all redundant applications, removed old drivers and hardware definitions, but to no avail. I'm wondering if there is somewhere in Windows a secret "log file" that records (in sequence) every program-start and file-open for the current session, which I might be able to glean something from? May be a long shot, but I thought I'd give it a go! Thanks for reading.

 

what antivirus do you have installed?

do you have ccleaner installed?
if you do , under tools, there is a startup, you can see what is running, I use 360TSE antivirus and have it set to come on at startup, and for at least 1 minute the active defense is running, and then everything is okay. that and ERUNT are the only things I have running at startup.

you can also go to start/run/ type in msconfig and look at startup there.

once you get your desktop, bring up task manager and double click on the cpu heading, this will list items with the most use first, what is running?

 

Actually, I don't have any anti-virus program. (I don't go online with
my XP PC.) I have ccleaner, but my problem is not connected to that. I
am more than familiar with msconfig, regedit and how to identify
processes linked to start-up, etc. Oh yes siree! As I said, when it
freezes I can't do a thing, and if I see what's running (by whatever
means) afterwards, it's too late. It's like a process has come in then
vanished. Hence my wondering is there was an audit trail of some kind.

 

what events are listed in event viewer, under applications and system?
if any errors need the source and the event id.

basic steps:

1. run checkdisk with the /r parameter , run at least twice, and preferably from the recovery console

2. does this do the same thing in safe mode?

3. do you have autorun and autoplay disabled and if not have you attached a flash drive from a different pc? if you have you could have gotten infected that way even if you do not go online, I would suggest that you connect to the internet long enough to download Malwarebytes free and run a scan.

4. if it does not do the same thing in safe mode, then some program is doing something at startup. It could even be an uninstalled program that left remnants of itself, event viewer will help in testing this as an error will be given if it is searching for a file or a driver.

5. since you are familiar with msconfig do the following:

Go to start/run/msconfig/press ok/If you want to see if it freezes uncheck
'load startup items' then press ok/This will make it so nothing starts except
for drivers. no antivirus etc. If it doesnt freeze then go to msconfig go to
startup tab and uncheck startup items that you do not want to start

afterwards post back on results of each above step so we can eliminate somethings.

 

The easiest way to diagnose this CTRL+ALT+DEL on startup. It will quickly pop the taskmgr and then you can see what's going on and track down the big bulky or unwanted file. Then when you find it, do a search for it and delete it and on next startup it will be fine. It's possible you could still have a hardware problem or something that doesn't show in tskmgr but I never bother with that until I know my tasks are clean. A well tuned explorer only has about 15 things in there and most of them are svchost or spoolsv. Anything else you can probably lose, more than likely some app is trying to go online at startup to report your usage/tracking etc ..

Here is my wakeup.bat file that loads on startup, it used to be much worse but I deleted a lot the junk permanently

echo off

echo #############################################
echo
echo UNLOAD
echo
echo #############################################

taskkill /IM alg.exe /F
taskkill /IM imapi.exe /F
taskkill /IM jqs.exe /F
taskkill /IM spoolsv.exe /F
taskkill /IM smax4pnp.exe /F
taskkill /IM ati2evxx.exe /F
taskkill /IM modem_logger_srv.exe /F
taskkill /IM MA_CMIDI_Inst.exe /F
taskkill /IM alg.exe /F

taskkill /IM wmiprvse.exe /F

del C:\Docume~1\default\LocalS~1\History\*.*
del C:\Docume~1\default\LocalS~1\Temp\*.*

echo ############################################k
echo SUCCESS DELETED TEMP*

taskkill /IM wmiprvse.exe /F

taskmgr.exe

 

I agree, i have put in invasive things like a super defragger, that put a "Line" across screen at start up, my anti key logger does this too on a blank start up screen,

PS lock up them all, put little people in there, who have a satisfied ego already

 

Thanks for your suggestions. Re internal services, I looked into those a long while ago. I researched each one on-line, to find out what they did and whether they were imperative for my particular needs. I've long forgotten what most of them do, but I can still recognise the names. So, whenever there's a day when my PC's especially sluggish and I've done tidy-ups and defrags, I always look what processes are running in the background. Any name I didn't recognise would stick out like a sore thumb!

I've also looked at all the "administrative tools" screens. Not done that for a while. (Btw, those logs never seem to get cleared down - there are entries there from 2016!) Anyway, nothing out of the ordinary there that I can see. Not that there seems to be much detail in the entries anyway - unless it's only an "abnormal event" that does that(?)

I should mention that I've also tried something else over the past year..... logging on and IMMEDIATELY doing searches for all files (a) created today, (b) last modified today, and (c) last accessed today. It's quite easy to do this in XP (one of its many plus points in my opinion!) because you can sort them into time order. Alas, even when I looked up what files had been mentioned, and what they were used for, it didn't give me any clues! Sigh.......

Anyway, I've logged on to post this response and just seen the above entry about the wakeup.bat file. That's a whole new area to me, so I'm going to go away and digest that, and see if it help any. Thanks!

 

clear you event viewer listings by right clicking on each directory (applications, system,and security) and choose clear all events, you will be given an option to save them, that is up to you) then once the events have been cleared restart, wait it out and then look at the event viewer to see if any thing has popped up with a warning or an error, and you can double click on each event to get a more detailed explanation, and on the right you can click on the third icon down and it will copy the event to notepad and then you can paste the info in your next reply if you need help with it.

NOTE: have you done a fresh install of xp? and does the issue occur then?

 

I would be careful with the thankfuls,
you may have solved a issue, but you have just lost more valuable time messing with a computer, that should run itself. remembering all these clicks and do dads has a negative effect on the brain, when it comes time to deal with emotions.

set your machine for the most intuitive feely touchy use, or we pick up negative thing patterns.

 

I think you guys are leading him down the wrong path, no windows service or feature should make it hang that long on startup. Fixing this as a windows setting is a waste of time in my opinion. Its more than likely an app wants to go online or an app that's waiting for some specific event to occur, like network connection or a mapped share. Which as I said needs CTRL+ALT+DEL to inspect.. Why don't you just look at your taskmgr by doing a CTRL+ALT+DEL on startup and then report what you find.

The wakeup.bat file is optional, its just an empty text file and you save it as .bat with some commands in it, it will run the commands you have which is generally to unload things you don't want running. I named it wakeup because its in my startup folder and runs on boot but it has nothing to do with waking up the computer, you can call it clean.bat if you want and run it at anytime. As you can see mine unloads spoolsv because I don't print from my laptop and it cleans temp folders and unloads a few more useless junk like imapi.exe and wmipsrv.exe, at one point it had so much crapware and promotion things that I was unloading 25 lines on startup. I have since cleaned up the laptop by removing a lot of that.

 

Aaaah, I see. Thanks for that. Nice to start with a clean slate! Yes, I've done a fresh install of XP a few times in the past, but to no avail.

As for doing c+a+d straight away, yes, I've done that in the 20 secs. preceding the freeze. There are about 5 non-permanent (expected) processes that come up but they vanish within 5-10 secs. then it's just the standard permanent dozen or so.

Actually, there always has been one teensy niggle in the back of mind over the years, now that I think of it. I uninstalled an HP scanner from my PC a few years ago. I've always found HP to "take over a machine" like you wouldn't believe, so I spent the best part of a day removing every last trace of it - no mean feat! - from driver libraries to hardware profiles to the registry, you name it. Even the "hidden" files scattered around everywhere. About 6 months ago, I thought I'd re-install it for an urgent task I couldn't do on my other 3(!) PCs that day, for some reason. I was totally flabbergasted, not to mention outraged, that the install process still detected
"something" which told it my PC had used it before.

I'm therefore wondering if there IS some crafty place where old hardware usage is still recorded, and if so, whether it has any possible link to my current problem?! It would have to be very devious, but I don't put anything past HP!

 

My pc originally had installed a floppy drive, and it was forever beeping each restart, so I went into the bios and removed it, and it speeded up my start time considerably.

Go into your bios and see what is listed in your hardware and see if it is something that can be disabled, but my printer was never listed in the bios so this may not be the issue.

do a search, with all folders and files unhidden, for HP and for Hewlett Packard and for printer , and then delete any thing pertaining to HP

do a search in regedit for the same, just be very careful,

 

Huh? As you've just suggested EXACTLY what I said I've said ALREADY done, I've decided to withdraw from this forum. Obviously I'm using a different "English". I'll abandon my quest. Over and out!

 

okay, but you have obviously missed a setting.

 

I used to run VMWare Server 1.10. That caused a ~30 hang at after every login- black screen until it got done doing whatever it was doing. The issue went away when I uninstalled it, and installed VMWare Player 6 which has the same functionality plus a few more features.

DaveW, on the slight chance you ever come back- do you use a SSD for your boot drive? If not, get one. 500GB min if you want it to have a long life. Avoid the Samsung 860EVO. It has issues. The 850EVO is fine as are other brands. Run the SATA in legacy (avoid AHCI, not worth the BSODs, occasionally you'll get lucky and it works properly, this advice is only for legacy hardware and XP, ACHI works fine on new stuff). Get Paragon Align Tool to propery align the SSD sectors.

When all else fails, backup your important stuff and reinstall XP. This time use Acronis True Image (my fav is 2014 for XP) or other drive imaging program to backup what you've installed so you never have to go through this crap again. If you don't have a 2nd drive for your images, get one. 2TB drives for $25 on eBay now.

If it's obviously bad hardware and you can't figure it out, salvage what's good and toss it. Go to eBay and get something else. Time is precious I don't spend more than a few minutes deciding if something is salvagable or not (keep in mind if eBay didn't exist, I'd sing a different tune).

 

AS i STATED ABOVE

My anti logger at start up throws a very fast white strip horizontally across my screen, I am ok with that, but a power defragger I had did it after it was removed from system. clearly it was a bug left over, cause i found it in common programs, deleted and the white stripe went away till i put in my (Zemata anti logger)
I do get a 20 sec black screen after the safe mode blink and comes and gos, and my "E systems Logo appears" then it go's black for 20 seconds. IT THAT NORMAL
WHATS NORMAL HERE, I want to keep my XP, as my computing days may well be over when its gone,

PS I HAVE NO FLOPPY DRIVE INSERT, WHICH IS A SHAME CAUSE I HAVE STUFF ON MANY

 

run a clean install with just the updates installed and drivers, then you will see what is normal, then add your programs one at a time and observe what happens as you use the pc, then you will know what is normal, and what happens with the programs you install and how the programs will interact with each other,

 

Try Autoruns:

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/download/autoruns/