Taskbar takes 4 minutes to become active

I have established that I have no malware or viruses etc by following all the clean up processes.

When I boot up and the desktop has loaded I find I can open very quickly, any programme from the desktop, except anything needing the internet as the Task bar is still inactive for 4 minutes with the Netgearlogon icon showing green, then the wireless card icon appears and it takes a further 1 minute to connect to the router.

Any programme I have opened, if I minimise it, nothing appears in the Task Bar until the wireless icon appears. all this time the Task Bar and Start button are totally inactive.



I have a Dell Dimension 9150 running XP Media centre 2005vn, SP3, BT Hub and Netgear wireless card. Bitdedefender Internet Security 2009, I know this has not caused or worsened my problem.

Any ideas will be welcome

Thanks

 

Could you do this test and report if there's any difference?
Go to start->run and type in "services.msc" (without the quotes) and press enter.
The service control panel should open.
Scroll down and find the service named "Workstation", right-click on it and select "properties".
Change the "startup type" to "disabled", press "apply" and "ok".
Restart your computer and see if there's any change.

 

Hi Mark. I'm suggesting he do this because his problem sounds extremly similar to one that I've run into before. A computer spends 2-5 minutes connecting to the WLAN, laging the login process. You can't use the taskbar or the start menu, but you can launch non-network related programs, and after closer investigation it turns out that it's the workstations service that is causing the lag.
I dont intend on recommending he keeps the service disabled as a solution as this will making him unable to use things like network printers and other network resources.

 

Sharagoz

Thanks, I've done that but no real difference other than it took 2mins for task bar to unlock and a further 2mins before network connection was made; incidentally signal strength is 100%. I should add that I have another pc beside mine and that never has any trouble booting up.

 

Alright, you can enable the workstation service again if you havent done so already.

Here's a couple of ways you can diagnose what's causing the startup lag:
Go to start->run->"msconfig"
Under the startup tab disable everything, then restart your comp.
If the startup time goes back to normal now, you can enable one or a few items at a time and try to pinpoint exactly which item is causing the problems.

Another way is to use a tool by Microsoft called "BootVis"
http://majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=664
Installed it, launch it, click Trace->"Next Boot", the tool will restart the computer, launch the tool again and present a report of the previous boot process.
In the left pane there are 7 boxes you can turn on and off to show disk activity, CPU activity, etc. The most interesting box is probably the one called "Process creates" which will show you how many seconds since boot time each process was created.
Scroll to the right and try to find the huge gap(s), and note down which processes is on each side of the gap.

 

I'm advising he uses msconfig the way it was ment to be used: As a diagnostics tool, not as a permanent solution to any problem.

 

http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=170032.

 

http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.htm#Note

 

Thanks for all your comments, I am not a novice nor advanced so I am reluctant to disable any start up items. Having reinstated the workstation, the taskbar has reverted to 4mins to unlock
.
Attached is the start up log from Spybot, hope this is of use.:banghead

 

Do you mind showing us a log from bootvis? It will log your boot process and give us a better clue about what's causing this.
Download BootVis from here and install it.
Once installed, launch BootVis from start->programs->microsoft bootvis->bootvis.
In BootVis click "Trace"->"Next Boot"->"OK"->"Reboot Now".
BootVis will restart your computer, and reopen after its done.
Just sit back and wait until BootVis has restarted.
Once you're back in BootVis click "File"->"Save as" and save the log to your desktop as "boottrace.bin".
Attach "boottrace.bin" to your next post.

EDIT:
I forgot an important step.
You will have to compress "boottrace.bin" to .zip file before you attach it, otherwise the file will be too big.

 

There is no attachment to your post.
Is the file bigger than 1MB? It usually only around 300kb compressed but I reckon it could be bigger for a very long trace.

 

Yes the file was 45Mb and is 6.07Mb compressed!!

 

Yes just found out how to do it!! Attached file shows it.

 

Sorry and thanks, I live and learn. I hope this is better.

 

I see Webroot SpySweeper. This has caused quite a few computers to slow down. I would say that is part of the slow down.

 

Thanks. Spysweeper is definitely not a cause, I only reinstalled it 3 days ago and it has not altered the situation. I had had it running for 6 months before this problem arose.

 

Thanks Mark, I will follow your recommendation and get back to you.

 

Furthwer to my last, I have worked through the start up options and there has been no difference other than when Netgearlogon... was disabled the wireless connection was made immediately after 4mins of taskbar inactivity- it did not take a further 1min. A minor improvement.

I also disabled Spysweeper.

Any observations on the following that I included in an earlier post, no. 17?


I have found, via Systools/event viewer/system that a regular error has been logged as error 3095:
"netlogon is running as a domain while the computer is a member of a workgroup, netlogon does not need to run in this configuration"

Can this be sorted, is it likely to be the problem as the router does not appear in the LAN in My Network Places, as it does in the other pc on the network? It seems to me that as the router is not on my LAN the wireless card can't find it easily.

 

As there has not been any reply to my last post do I presume that the thread has been closed by moderators?