[danwer930]

Hi there,

I would really appreciate any help with a very annoying problem I've been having.

A couple of months ago, not really concurrent with any changes that I knowingly made to my system, a funny thing started happening when I powered up my Compaq Presario X1000 laptop. After going through the usual Windows startup procedures, the normal desktop, with all of my desktop icons and the taskbar tray, would appear for just a split second. Then it would quickly disappear, showing just my blue wallpaper and a cursor.

I quickly discovered that if I waited 30 seconds or so, hit Cntrl+Alt+Del, brought up the Task Manager and manually started explorer.exe as a "new task", this would get things back to normal. However, anytime I would restart my computer, I'd have to go through the same procedure: desktop flash for a quick second, wait a few seconds, and start up explorer.exe manually.

I kept putting off dealing with this problem until yesterday, when two additional problems tacked themselves on:

1) I now have to manually start explorer.exe 2-3 times before it will actually launch, even if I wait a couple of minutes before hitting cntrl+alt+del. Before, it would always launch the first time I entered it as a new task, provided I waited 30 seconds or so.

2) All of a sudden, almost none of my "auto launch" applications (AIM, MSN Messenger, Norton, etc.) launch when I fire up explorer.exe. Only the bare essentials (sound, internet connection montior) show up. If I manually launch AIM or MSN Messenger from the Start menu, they function normally, however.

I'm concerned because the problem seems to be getting worse. Any suggestions about how to fix this? I have updated all my Windows Service Packs, etc. and nothing seems to have helped.

Thank you very much in advance!

Daniel

P.S.: I should probably also mention that I'm currently trying to resolve the Winfixer Malware problem in the Malware area of this site, though much of my startup problems have been going on long before the Winfixer bug showed up.

Edited by danwer930, 02 October 2005 - 02:23 AM.

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[Emery Herman]

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[Michael]

Hello and Welocome to Geeks To Go danwer930!
My advice is not to do anything till you have been given the clean bill of health form the malware forum, we don't what to do any thing that will make their job harder.

You should go start < run type sfc /scannow (this will ask for your CD and take about an hour) before you do the other segestion but after being fixed at the malware forum.

[OwNt]

Looking at your hijackthis log, most of that stuff is probably causing problems. some of which known to cause problems like the ones your now experiencing. I would get a clean bill of health from cretemonster, then Repair XP.

[danwer930]

Hi everyone,

Thanks so much for chiming in so quickly on this problem. Just as you were suggesting, in the process of resolving my malware problem, the startup problem discussed in this thread seems to have gone away for the first time in months. There appears to have indeed been a connection between my infection and this problem. I apologize for not having the foresight to think that there would be a connection- had that occurred to me, I wouldn't have opened up a new thread until my malware problem was resolved.

Thank you again for your help, and feel free to close this thread if you think that's appropriate- if the problem returns, I know who to contact!

Daniel