I wish I could define it better. This is my first post here, and usually I don't have much difficulty finding solutions to these kinds of problems, but this time the symptoms are so vague I don't even know where to start looking.
I'm having this problem on my laptop, (Toshiba Satellite, M35-S359, 1.4GHz Centrino, with Windows XP Home SP2) and it occurs on boot, every time. Any and every application I try to start after the computer boots takes 3-5 minutes to actually come up (while the HD is being accessed the entire time, according to the light), and then only after I use ctrl-alt-del to bring up task manager. Goes like this: reboot, everything appears to come up fine; I try to open any application, HD light comes up, flickering, as if the program is loading; HD light keeps flickering for a few minutes until it mostly subsides; I hit ctrl-alt-del and HD light flickers again for a few seconds; finally, task manager pops up simultaneously with every other application I tried to open during the last few minutes. Now, task manager may or may not be necessary to bring these applications up, it's just that once I found a routine that seemed to expedite their opening, I stuck with it. After all this happens, the computer is fine until the next reboot.
This may or may not be related: Often I don't reboot my laptop for long periods at a time, usually just putting it into hibernation until I open it back up again, so my first experience with a similar occurrance of this problem wasn't related to rebooting. And again, this might not be the same problem, but it might give an indication of something larger that could be wrong. On the main windows taskbar I have a custom taskbar linked to a folder in which I put shortcuts to my most used applications; a kind of personal start menu. In that folder I have another folder with specifically shortcuts to repair and maintence applications (regclean, adaware, spybot, etc). Sometimes when on that menu, everything will freeze for 2-3 minutes if I hover over that folder. Nothing can be opened until it finally opens up that specific folder in that custom toolbar menu. Once it does open, everything works fine and I don't have any more problems with that folder for that session. With this in mind, the only guess I've had about this whole thing is that the problem is somehow related to windows explorer.
I'm sorry it's so long and vague, but I'm at my wits' end. It's generally not a huge problem, because I so rarely have to turn the pc off, and even then it's only a matter of patience when it reboots, but it's still frustrating. If anyone has any suggestions of where I should start poking around, I'd really appreciate the help.
~k
I'm having this problem on my laptop, (Toshiba Satellite, M35-S359, 1.4GHz Centrino, with Windows XP Home SP2) and it occurs on boot, every time. Any and every application I try to start after the computer boots takes 3-5 minutes to actually come up (while the HD is being accessed the entire time, according to the light), and then only after I use ctrl-alt-del to bring up task manager. Goes like this: reboot, everything appears to come up fine; I try to open any application, HD light comes up, flickering, as if the program is loading; HD light keeps flickering for a few minutes until it mostly subsides; I hit ctrl-alt-del and HD light flickers again for a few seconds; finally, task manager pops up simultaneously with every other application I tried to open during the last few minutes. Now, task manager may or may not be necessary to bring these applications up, it's just that once I found a routine that seemed to expedite their opening, I stuck with it. After all this happens, the computer is fine until the next reboot.
This may or may not be related: Often I don't reboot my laptop for long periods at a time, usually just putting it into hibernation until I open it back up again, so my first experience with a similar occurrance of this problem wasn't related to rebooting. And again, this might not be the same problem, but it might give an indication of something larger that could be wrong. On the main windows taskbar I have a custom taskbar linked to a folder in which I put shortcuts to my most used applications; a kind of personal start menu. In that folder I have another folder with specifically shortcuts to repair and maintence applications (regclean, adaware, spybot, etc). Sometimes when on that menu, everything will freeze for 2-3 minutes if I hover over that folder. Nothing can be opened until it finally opens up that specific folder in that custom toolbar menu. Once it does open, everything works fine and I don't have any more problems with that folder for that session. With this in mind, the only guess I've had about this whole thing is that the problem is somehow related to windows explorer.
I'm sorry it's so long and vague, but I'm at my wits' end. It's generally not a huge problem, because I so rarely have to turn the pc off, and even then it's only a matter of patience when it reboots, but it's still frustrating. If anyone has any suggestions of where I should start poking around, I'd really appreciate the help.
~k
