looong pause during boot

[jonwallace]

Does anyone have any suggestions for curing a 10 minute pause in a Windows XP bootup?

The PC gets to the desktop then sits for exactly 10 minutes with only two icons in the system tray, then suddenly the screensaver cuts in signalling that the bootup is complete and then everything hums along like normal.

I haven't installed anything fundamental, like new hardware or anything. Safe Mode boots like you would expect.
The Event Viewer complains about services not starting, but not usually the same one every time.
I've looked and pruned the stuff at startup (and used revo to uninstall those pesky things that are trying to load non-existent files...)

I'm at a loss. Anyone any ideas?

[HansV]

Can you display Task Manager? If so, does the Processes tab (sorted descending on CPU usage) provide a clue?

[jonwallace]

Sorry, I should have said nothing responds till the 10 minutes is up, (not even extremely slowly) and there is no hard drive activity to speak of. Maybe the system is waiting for something that times out after 10 minutes? I'll have to have a look at my "reconnect network drives" status.

[Bigaldoc]

What AV program do you use John? Sometimes those tend to be a bit finicky on startup.

[JoeP]

Sorry, I should have said nothing responds till the 10 minutes is up, (not even extremely slowly) and there is no hard drive activity to speak of. Maybe the system is waiting for something that times out after 10 minutes? I'll have to have a look at my "reconnect network drives" status.

Have you used something like Autoruns for Windows to see what is being started when you boot?

Joe

[jonwallace]

Al:
I'm using Kaspersky Internet security 2010, and have been for months. Good thought though. I'll trawl through both its obscure settings and their forums and see if I can't see anything that might have changed.

Joe:
I looked at the bewildering array of things that you get with Autoruns, but couldn't see anything that wasn't there before. It did spur me to prune the list of autostarts. Isn't it frightening just how many things have to work together to get the PC going? It's a surprise that it works at all sometimes!

[JoeP]

In Autoruns the most important thing for most users is the Logon tab.

Yes, it is amazing what happens when you boot a PC. Sometimes you have to wonder how it works at all.

Joe

[jonwallace]

Update:
Of course, when I booted up this evening everything just worked. sigh.

Thanks for the suggestions anyway guys.

[HansV]

That's not unusual...

Should the Harris Tweed be brought back to the Isle of Harris or to the Borders region?