[RKinner]

It's normal for it to look for registry entries that aren't there. Usually it will look in HKLM and then HKCU or maybe it's the other order. The repeating 128 times is not normal. You can save the log and upload it to something like dropbox then give me a link to it and I can look at it.

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Thank you for your patience to receive this, Mr. Kinner. I had a major work schedule change that has turned my days upside down.

The Process Monitor log file we discussed is available at https://www.dropbox..../Logfile%20.PML

On closer examination of the log, the repeated 20-line segments I mentioned occur not 128 times, but 352 times, with a certain short break for a few other commands between some repeats and with one exception as noted in the Frequency Detail list below. These repeats begin appearing in the log at 6:41:26.0539472 PM (Time of Day) and seem to end at 6:41:26.9441570 PM (Time of Day). That appears to be only less than a 1-second delay, but there are many other repeated segments, as mentioned. Here is the Frequency Detail of this segment repeat:

Frequency Detail:

25 Repeats
break
79 Repeats (On the 5th of these repeats, an entry for the Path of C:\WINDOWS\explorer.exe is added at the bottom of the segment, with a "SUCCESS" notation.)
break
22 Repeats
break
99 Repeats
break
83 Repeats
break
44 Repeats

Here is a screen print of this 20-line sequence:

Mr. Kinner, I really respect your knowledge of these things, and I absolutely appreciate your willingness to look at this huge Process Monitor log of mine. Thank you, so much!

[JIm Andersen]

Thank you for your patience to receive this, Mr. Kinner. I had a major work schedule change that has turned my days upside down.

The Process Monitor log file we discussed is available at https://www.dropbox..../Logfile%20.PML

On closer examination of the log, the repeated 20-line segments I mentioned occur not 128 times, but 352 times, with a certain short break for a few other commands between some repeats and with one exception as noted in the Frequency Detail list below. These repeats begin appearing in the log at 6:41:26.0539472 PM (Time of Day) and seem to end at 6:41:26.9441570 PM (Time of Day). That appears to be only less than a 1-second delay, but there are many other repeated segments, as mentioned. Here is the Frequency Detail of this segment repeat:

Frequency Detail:

25 Repeats
break
79 Repeats (On the 5th of these repeats, an entry for the Path of C:\WINDOWS\explorer.exe is added at the bottom of the segment, with a "SUCCESS" notation.)
break
22 Repeats
break
99 Repeats
break
83 Repeats
break
44 Repeats

Here is a screen print of this 20-line sequence:

Mr. Kinner, I really respect your knowledge of these things, and I absolutely appreciate your willingness to look at this huge Process Monitor log of mine. Thank you, so much!

[RKinner]

I'm only a little ways through the log. I have another Win 7 laptop that I am working on for a friend. I think as soon as I get it running again the best thing to do is to put process monitor on it and get a boot log and then look at them side by side. I do have some notes already:


avgtp is still being loaded. It shows up twice in the registry.

Can you delete these in regedit?

HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\avgtp
HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Enum\Root\LEGACY_AVGTP


Also in the registry. I think you can just delete these tho you might want to export them first:


HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\UnreadMail
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\UnreadMail

I don't have them on my PC. They were installed by Outlook and cause the login screen to tell you how many unread mail messages you have. I don't think it's very useful and it does take some time.

The tcpip setup is doing a lot of thrashing so let's reset the winsock and tcpip:

Copy the next 3 lines:

netsh winsock reset catalog
netsh int ipv4 reset %userprofile%\Desktop\reset4.log
netsh int ipv6 reset %userprofile%\Desktop\reset6.log

Start, All Programs, Accessories, right click on Command Prompt and Run as Administrator, Continue. Right click and Paste or Edit then Paste and the copied line should appear. Hit Enter. It will want to reboot. Let it.






`

[JIm Andersen]

I appreciate your attention to this, Mr. Kinner.

Just in case, because you mention you might compare my bootlog to a Win 7 laptop bootlog, I should point out my desktop is Windows XP; not Win 7.

I followed your instructions in the order presented me, but there were a couple quirks:

After deleting HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\UnreadMail, the next item you asked me to delete, HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\UnreadMail, was not in the Registry. The following print screen shows both my search location and the key's absence.

I then copied the three specified lines, assuming you meant them to be copied all at once, and got an apparent erroneous result in the Command Prompt window, and also received no reboot request:

COMMAND PROMPT SCREEN COPY:

Microsoft Windows XP [Version 5.1.2600]
© Copyright 1985-2001 Microsoft Corp.

C:\WINDOWS>netsh winsock reset catalog

WARNING: Could not obtain host information from machine: [700S]. Some commands may not be available.
Access is denied.

Unable to reset the Winsock Catalog.
Access is denied.

C:\WINDOWS>netsh int ipv4 reset %userprofile%\Desktop\reset4.log

WARNING: Could not obtain host information from machine: [700S]. Some commands may not be available.
Access is denied.

The following command was not found: int ipv4 reset C:\Documents and Settings\Jim\Desktop\reset4.log.

C:\WINDOWS>netsh int ipv6 reset %userprofile%\Desktop\reset6.log

From here, the reboot time up to profile login screen is improved to 1:33, but now 4+ minutes after login. It connected to DSL in 2:20, but everything else still had to load, and then it still limbered for a bit. Firefox took forever to start, on my eventual command.

I patiently await your next instruction. Thank you.

[RKinner]

Sorry I was thinking this was a Win 7 and not an XP. That's why the IPv4 & 6 commands didn't work.




I'm surprised the winsock command didn't work tho. Also puzzled about the hosts file reference since we didn't ask it for the hosts file.
Download HostsXpert from http://www.funkytoad...HostsXpert.zip. Save the file then right click and Extract All. It will create a new folder in the same place. In the folder find HostsXpert.exe and run it.

It will take a few seconds to appear. If the top line in the left column says Make Writeable, click on it and it should change to Make Read Only? If it already says Make Read Only? that's OK just go on to the next step.
Now click on the left column entry that says: Restore MSHosts file. Click on the Make Read Only? entry then close HostXpert.

Now try:

netsh winsock reset catalog
netsh int ip reset \reset.log

[RKinner]

I'm thinking you may have active desktop turned on. This might delay the desktop until the Internet came up.

Open the Control Panel.
Open the Appearance and Themes and then the Display icon or just click Display.
Click the Desktop tab.
Click the Customize Desktop button.
Click the Web tab in the Desktop Items window.


If you wish to disable Active Desktop, make sure all checkboxes in this window are un-checked.

Let me know if that was on and if it helped.

[JIm Andersen]

I'm sorry again for the delay in my response. This may be the new norm for me, given current job demands.

After running HostsXpert, running the two "netsh..." lines through Command Prompt seemed to process correctly. I was asked to reboot the computer, and I did. Unread email count is no longer displayed. (Thank you!)

Current startup is 1:42 to the profile login screen, then an additional 2:15 until online, but things continue to load as the computer labors for another 2 1/2 minutes or more. Task Manager, also, shows very high CPU Usage (maybe 80-100%) most of this time.

I checked Active Desktop, and it was already off, but funny you should mention that:

Over the years, from time to time, I would get an Active Desktop error on startup, wherein a white error screen would appear and advise me of the error. Every time I would check Active Desktop settings, only to find they were already off. As I recall, I would then reassign my wallpaper to correct the display, and be done with it. Never could figure it out what happened. (It happens that way on my other XP, too.)

Just in case this factors in, a new—but suddenly mysteriously resolved—quirk:

ONLY while writing this, when checking details of the quirk for the sake of telling you, did the quirk seem to resolve. (There were no reboots or other action taken since the problem last occurred.) As it were, EVERY time (probably 20 or so), and only since installing Dropbox to get you that Process Monitor log, every screen print I made seemed to display most but not all graphics and very little text, both in their thumbnails and through Acrobat. Only after I saved it as a jpg (through Acrobat) did everything appear correctly, but only in the jpg file. This never happened before and, now, it is suddenly resolved. Memory or CPU Usage didn't seem to be a factor, so I don't get it. Maybe just an FYI at this point?

Edited by JIm Andersen, 02 December 2013 - 05:48 PM.

[RKinner]

No problem. This is the first day I have been online since the Wednesday before Thanksgiving.

My big Win 7 computer crashed again and I haven't gotten around to fix it since I managed to get a bad cold on my trip and just don't feel up to it so I can't play with the procmon log today.

Since you have been playing with fonts let's delete C:\Windows\System32\FNTCACHE.DAT then reboot. Windows will create a new fontcache.dat file.

Also go in to Services (Start, Run, services.msc , OK and Find Task Scheduler. As a test, right click on it and select Properties then change the Startup Type: to Disabled. OK. Reboot and see how long it takes to boot now. Go back into Sertvices and set it back to Automatic

[JIm Andersen]

After the fntcache.dat deletion and reboot, startup times were about the same, but CPU Usage was generally lower, in the 60-80% range, although still occasionally hitting 100%.

Disabling the Task Scheduler seemed to reduce the CPU Usage by 5-10% with no appreciable change otherwise.

It seems almost subjective, though, because processes appear to start in a different order each time (one time I'm online sooner, the next time much later), and I can only sense, sometimes, how much the computer really labors after a certain point. Does that make sense? That, I guess, is where you come in!

Don't worry about my procmon log or other problems I present, when you have other stuff to do. I will live, and my computer could always use a break. Just take care of your cold, and make sure you live your life outside of geekstogo. I'm just grateful for your help thus far! Thank you!

[RKinner]

Not sure how fast you can get Task Manager running but it might be useful to see what is eating so much CPU during the boot.

[JIm Andersen]

I can tell you that, on startup, the System Idle Process has probably 80-99% CPU—the entire time—while its memory usage is a mere 16k. Other processes that use considerably more memory seem to have considerably less CPU, except with the starting of Applications, like maybe Firefox. I don't quite understand CPU vs MemUsage, though, and I do not understand System Idle Process.

With that, and because all Usage except for that of the System Idle Process is so static, I thought it might be helpful to videotape the Task Manager during startup. If so, and considering the line items would quickly change depending on how things are sorted, I only wonder whether you'd prefer me to sort the Tasks by Image Name, CPU or Mem Usage. How would you most easily view the changing lines?

What do you think? Might that help?

[RKinner]

Sort by CPU usage with the highest users at the top.

[JIm Andersen]

I am back. I trust your cold is gone, and hope you had a wonderful Christmas!

I recorded 7:31 of start-up, from the point of my password entry to about 30 seconds after I finally started Firefox. Your link to the video of such is https://www.dropbox....C%20700S%20.MOV

The Task Manager display kicks in at 2:10, the earliest I was allowed to start it, and CPU Usage is high throughout the process.

You might guess I have not used this computer a lot since I returned to work, but that is not to say it's a back-burner machine, so please don't give up on me. It is still my primary machine, and I do have to ready it for a Vista upgrade now that XP is soon defunct, so I appreciate your continued guidance at fixing it. Thank you, so much, for all you've done!

Edited by JIm Andersen, 26 December 2013 - 08:32 PM.

[JIm Andersen]

Just a note to let you know I'm still here, Mr. Kinner, since the delay of my most recent replies might suggest otherwise. I don't mean to rush you, and I do appreciate the value of your work, so I just want you to know I'm still here and your work will not be ignored.

Jim