Windows XP start up problem

[AM04ARO]

Quite often my laptop boots to the desktop wallpaper but the icons do not come up and nothing else loads.

If I Ctl Alt Del and bring up the task manager and play around a bit every thing works fine - no error mesages have ever shown and everything else loads.

Any ideas as it's a pain that it does not just work.

[ThePassenger]

Experiment: When it next does it CNTRL+ALT+DEL, got to Processes and see if explorer.exe is running. If so kill it and run a new task oddly enough called explorer.exe

If this fixes it I'd advise doing the usual spyware scans and A/V sweeps as well as point the machine to Microsoft for WindowsUpdates. Possibly also try disabling the Synaptics driver for your scratchpad... that fixed the MIL's laptop and as it's basically a PS/2 or USB mouse the scratchpad keeps working.

[coleo]

I'd also recommend using a utility called CCleaner I find it most useful, and highly efficient. First time I ran it, it cleared nearly 1gb of junk!

So well worth downloading and as the previous post says just 'experiment' it could just be something simple.

www.ccleaner.com/

[Stigmundfreud]

a big culpret is slow explorer starts can actually be messenger. Noticed on different systems that upon booting in, until messenger starts the rest of the system doesnt play even though you can highlight and click - until that program loads nothing will respond. worth a look

Also some basic system maintenance could be in order (clear out all temp areas and yes, I am going to say it, defrag) can all help (not sure on your level so start/programs/accessories/system tools - run clean up first, then defrag.

One last thing before you do all that try runnng start/run/chkdsk /f

actually type:

chkdsk /f

then run - it wont run but will ask if it should run on reboot - press y then reboot

[AM04ARO]

coleo said:

I'd also recommend using a utility called CCleaner I find it most useful, and highly efficient. First time I ran it, it cleared nearly 1gb of junk!

So well worth downloading and as the previous post says just 'experiment' it could just be something simple.

www.ccleaner.com/

Nice one...seems to have made the laptop quicker, just have to see if it fixes the problem