Intermittent freezing on Boot up

For the past few weeks, I've been experiencing freeze ups when I boot up my laptop. (Windows XP)

It doesn't happen all the time, but it's been happening more lately.

What happens is that it boots up normally: Desktop, icons, quicklaunch, startup taskbar all appear. On my start taskbar I get all my security apps loaded and my Intel pro/set wireless icon. Then the computer freezes Before all my network icons appear. If I try to start anything, nothing happens. I can't even shutdown normally...have to do a hard shutdown.



I have to think that something or some program is not starting up properly (network maybe?).

Is there some diagnostic tool to find out? How can I find out what's going on?

Also, I checked my hardware and I have a ! next to Creative SoundFont Synthesizer. Could that be the prob? I tried to look that up and find a driver, but couldn't find anything online (including the Creative website). Everything seems to be working fine, including my sound, other than the problem with startup


Attached is a screenshot of my startup list and the hardware...


Thanks for any advice.

 

Those should be fine, I'm pretty sure. The AVG isn't an antivirus. That's the one for safe search from the last thread I had in here (you helped me in that one). The problem started before that was installed.

I can try to stop that and see if the safe search app still works.

What other startups should I stop?

 

Thanks Dom (again ) I stopped all those startups. And I'll see about fixing the hardware issue. Hopefully, it's that easy. lol

 

After updating drivers and repairing the one, it turns out it was my Spy Sweeper that was the problem. It was freezing on startup. The only reason I even caught it was because when I scrolled over the startup icon, it was saying loading...:rolleyes

I uninstalled it and think I may try Malwarebytes.

 

I always liked spysweeper. It's been good for me up until this.

I ended up doing an uninstall/reinstall of Spysweeper when I saw you had to pay for Malwarebytes. If I have any more probs, I'll go from there.

It was a definite relief to figure out the problem though.

Again, thanks for your help.

 

You do not have to pay for malwarebytes. I run both free and paid versions.
The paid version will offer real time protection and auto update. I have the paid version on my husband's computer. On my computers, I run the free version because I'm am very good about updating things.
Definitely load the free version. It will not interefere with anything (in face the paid version co-exists peacefully with AVG v 8.5) and it is IMHO one of the best apps for finding anything nasty on a computer.

 

Thanks plodr. I'm actually looking for real time. My paid realtime version of Spysweeper was freezing on startup so caused the whole computer to freeze. I uninstalled it and actually have malwarebytes installed to use for scanning. I wasn't aware the realtime version of it is paid (which is what I"m looking for).

I reinstalled Spysweeper and am going to stick with that since it's paid for for a long time and is working again.