Dos progress bar on boot-up

When I boot my 6130-HS, I get the usual Averatec logo, but after that, instead of a black screen for a couple of seconds followed by the Windows XP loading screen, I get a black screen with a flashing cursor, then a DOS progress bar at the bottom, which sometimes takes a few seconds to fill. Then XP loads as usual, though it seems like it takes longer than before.

I recently had all these problems, so I did a factory restore and they were completely cured. But 2 weeks after the restore, it's started happening again. Does anyone have any idea why?

I know the obvious thing to suggest is "hardware problem" but this would not explain why a factory restore fixes everything, and why it subsequently starts happening again after a couple of weeks.

I have not screwed with any services or anything like that this time round, just in case that's what was doing it.

 

I believe it is harmless. One of my desktop PCs loaded with win XP Home has a quick (1-2 seconds) progress white bar at the bottom of the screen during every boot like win2000 boot. It appears just before the Window loading screen.This is not a disk scan due to an improper shutdown. I ran check disk and found no error. Hardware and software work normally. I did a Google search and found that some people have this quick progress white bar during XP boot. Nobody knows exactly why it occurs. All seem to agree that it's harmless. Don't worry about it if everything else is working fine.

 

Ahh. I did worry about the fact that it never used to be there though.

 

On my 3250 I get that but ONLY if the system is coming out of Hibernation, not with a normal start or restart.