Greetings, all...
Just a quick question to see if anyone else has experienced a slow startup of parts of Windows XP SP2 since the update to .981. With the previous version, on booting up, the desktop would appear, then a second or two later the XP taskbar would appear and the tedious XP startup sound would play simultaneously; startup programs would immediately run, and the avast tray icon did not display the red slash that shows up when one of its components is not functioning. In other words, it was a nice, crisp, clean startup.
But since the update to .981, the taskbar appears immediately, but the startup sound occurs about 10 -15 seconds later, and during this period the avast icon in the tray shows the red slash (or whatever it is) until the sound plays. I guess .981 doesn't like something about my system...
My specs: Intel Core 2 Duo 6400 on Asus P5L-VM 1394, 1 GB memory, Windows XP SP2, firewall is XP's built-in thing. No other security apps run at startup, and in fact the only other things set to run at startup are NeroCheck (version 6) and Nero InCD (version 4.3.something); I don't allow Creative's X-Fi startup crap to run (yes, I'm very anal retentive). Hardware drivers include Intel chipset software, most recent X-FI driver (ONLY the driver is installed, not the other bloatware) and Asus/Attansic LAN driver, and NVIDIA Forceware 93.71. All drivers are WHQL certified.
This is not a major crisis, of course, but I'm curious about what might be causing this. Any insight would be appreciated.
Regards,
Crashman