Startup Delay with S96J

I've been experiencing this problem for about the last month or so. It's not so much a huge problem, but rather an annoyance that I would rather not deal with. Here's the deal: when I boot up my computer, it gets to the windows desktop fairly quickly; at this point, my desktop wallpaper is displayed, but there are no icons nor am I able to go to the task manager. It's sort of like a hang, but it isn't frozen or anything like that. After about a minute to a minute and a half, the icons load and everything runs fine.

I have google'd this problem and it seems that other people have had the same issue. Unfortunately, the resolutions that were suggested or worked for those people, did not work for me. I've tried disabling and re-enabling a bunch of different services, but I haven't had success with it. I have windows service pack 2 installed, and I'm thinking that's the root of the issue. How do I correct this annoying "start up lag"?

In case it matters, I have a T2600 2.16GHZ Core Duo Processor with 2.0GB of RAM. I don't really know why this delay is happening, but if you have any suggestions, it would be greatly appreciated.

 

Chances are, your problem is almost surely in the software range.

Did you install Windows on it, or did it come already installed? To be honest, the fastest and most reliable way to fix this issue would be to back up your stuff, and start over from scratch. It'll take a couple hours to reload everything, but the problem should be gone(unless it is being caused by something that you reload onto the system).

It could very well take up far more time to locate the problem and try to fix it than to do a clean windows install.

However, I would first check on a few things before you reformat. Do you have a firewall, anti virus, anti spyware, and anti malware software? Be sure to use these. If you haven't, run a virus scan. Also, check for spyware. If you don't have it, I would suggest getting Spybot Search and Destroy. No one has ever brought me a computer asking me to fix it that Spybot didn't find spyware on.

Another possibility is that you've either got a corrupt section on your hard disk, or your hard disk is very fragmented. Watch your hard disk light while it is being slow, and tell us if it is on. Also, try opening up task manager to give us CPU useage.

 

Windows came pre-installed.

I run Ad-Aware twice a week; I have yet to encounter any sort of "serious" spyware issues. I don't install anything from unknown sources. Usually there are three or four questionable files located with Ad-Aware, but rarely are there any malicious files found. Before I made this post, I ran another scan and nothing came up. I run CCleaner twice or three times a week; I have a constant virus scan running as it's necessary to connect to my university's network.

I try to defrag my hard drive about once a month, or after I install or uninstall a huge file. I actually defragmented about three days ago, and only 1% of the files on my hard drive were fragmented.

I have 30 processes running currently on my computer, with my CP usage hovering around 1-3% and my page file right around 252MB.

 

OK. Thanks for the info. The rules pretty much everything out, except for a corrupt section of the hard disk. Can you restart the lappy and tell me what hard disk access is like while it is frozen? Also, watch cpu useage and make note of the most demanding processes.