Windows XP taking a long time to get to desktop

Hi all, I hope someone might be able to help.

I have next to me an HP 8100 Elite SFF, running Windows XP 32-bit. It's just over a year old, just out of warranty, and has developed a fault seemingly out of nowhere.

The PC is used to perform file transfers in our business using a lightweight bespoke client, which is working just fine. However, having worked flawlessly for a long while it has developed a startup fault out of nowhere. When booting Windows, there is a delay of several minutes between the loading screen and the eventual appearance of the desktop.

There are no errors in Event Viewer, and Device Manager is reporting all of the hardware as working correctly. There is nothing plugged in other than mouse/keyboard/ethernet cable/monitor, and no hardware or software was changed prior to the fault developing. We have swapped out all cables etc and run a full defrag to no avail.

Any other options or wipe and start again? A fix is preferable to a reinstall.

 

After the POST(BIOS) Screen and before the Windows Logo tap the f8 key to brign up the boot options. Then select Safe mode and see if it has the same problem there.

 

The finger of suspicion may point to recent Microsoft updates.
Try rolling them back and see what happens. Or roll back to a date prior to the problem arising.

 

OK, so it still takes an age to get into safe mode as well...

Starting to become a little suspicious that it might be a dodgy ethernet port.

 

It's very possible, is the ethernet integrated into the motherboard or is it an add-on card?

From a command prompt enter the command chkdsk c: /r then say yes to running the check after the next reboot and reboot the system. The check shouldn't take more than 20 minutes or so but that will at least remove a failing disk drive from being very likely.

 

Ran a full boot time disk check (including a surface scan) earlier, found a few minor issues but the problem prevails.

It is onboard ethernet, but I have access to a half-height Intel ethernet card that I'll stick in there tomorrow and disable the onboard one.

 

When in the F8 boot menu try to enable boot logging before starting any of the Safe Boot options (preferably the network one). Windows will then log which drivers are loaded and in which order.

You can later find the resulting log file, Ntbtlog.txt, in the %SystemRoot% (usually C:\Windows) folder.

 

Good call, box is at work and I'm at home now, but worth a try in the morning

 

Actually, you can often get a clue by just looking at the screen while boot logging is enabled as the drivers will be listed. Often the last one shown before issues occur is the culprit.

 

Agreed, problem is it gets to the last one and then hangs there for a while, mup.sys iirc. But I don't think it's necessarily that causing the problem.

 

I found this on teh interwebs. Might give you a few additional pointers.

 

Thanks matey. Have a dollop of rep for repeated helpfulness

 

Thank you, but you should have at least waited until you've got some sort of positive result. It's appreciated nonetheless.

EDIT: WTF!? 1020 points. I don't even want to know how many points you need to give that...

 

Just one more quick thought. I know you're adverse to reinstalling if it can be avoided, but do you have a disk imager like TrueImage at hand? If so, you could create an image of the current installation, then dump it and reinstall. Might give an indication as to whether or not it's a Windows issue (which is most probably is). And then you can always roll the system back with that image you made.

FWIW, you can download a 30 day trial of TrueImage from the Acronis website.

 

Thanks mate, I've got access to various tools from the IT department (including the staff, who should be doing what I'm doing!), so I'll give these things a bash tomorrow. It's one of several machines designed to give redundancy, but I need to rule out hardware failure before we can put it back into circulation.

Oh, and rep power is rep score ÷ 100

 

Well, you're all set then. I'll mull over the situation a bit more. Should I get any sort of bright idea I'll make sure to let you know.

As for rep I'm content with my 1/30...

 

Any chance there are two anti-virus programmes installed? Causes the problem you've stated.

 

Just Sophos

 

I'm curious. Any update on the situation?

 

Sorry I completely forgot I was in a training course all day so won't be able to look at it again until tomorrow morning. Promise I'll update the thread though