More info on XP expiring

Pete:

Boot-up to the desktop is fairly quick, unless it hangs up before the icons appear or the task bar doesn't show. Either of those needs a re-boot. The time-waster is between inital appearance of the desktop and getting to where internet access is available.

Watching the Task Manager, I can see it twittering about between 0 and 7% for about 15 minutes before "alg.exe" appears, and I can get on line.

My security program is Norton Security Suite.

 

Frank,

My 1st guess is that's where the answer may lie.

Is it performing a scan at boot time? Check your settings for NSS.
If so , you can use a work-around. Stop the boot time scan, you can do a systems file scan later or at the end of your session if you want.

Once the end of session scan is done, there's no need to again scan those files at boot time. Nothing will change after the machine has shut down.

Apart from that, do you really need alg.exe service? You say that you can't get on line without it.How are you connected?

Mine is set to Manual ,but never comes on because I don't use ICS
see Application Layer Gateway Service
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc783418(v=ws.10).aspx
http://www.blackviper.com/windows-services/application-layer-gateway-service/

Something to check out I guess.

Pete E

 

I have Xfinity bundled service with ISP and land-line phone going through an Arris TG862 modem. I use both IE8 and Google Chrome as browsers.

I'll have a look at those links you provided.

 

Frank,

Thanks. Are you using a router as well to connect to the modem to share the connection with your wife?

BTW -the blackviper link I gave you - Select Windows XP
You'll see there that alg.exe is no longer necessary in XP w SP3

Hence, I actually disabled it with no ill effects. Firewall is just working fine.
Any "sharing" is done through the router.

Not sure how it'll affect using the setup you have.

Pete E

 

Pete:

That Arris device is a combination router, modem and telephony gateway. My desktop is wired to it by an Ethernet cable, the phone system by a regular phone jack and DW's iPad goes through the wireless side.

I'm not completely comfortable having my land-line telecom service at the mercy of a relatively unproven modem. in the six months or so we've had one, the first one smoked itself and had to be replaced, leaving us without the land-line for 3 days, and a couple of times, it's replacement has thrown hissy fits in which it keeps restarting without a command. The re-start takes about 20 minutes during which time the land-line is down. This happened three times in one day last week. It's running OK at present, but I don't trust it completely. We're seriously considering switching to Frontier for phone and ISP and leaving Cable TV on Comcast so we can still get Canadian channels. The Frontier rep I talked to said they don't run the land-line through their modem. There's a land-line socket on their wall plate and the phone line decoding is done by their in-house system. Not sure if their modem will need a router, but we kept our Belkin from the previous installation.

FYI, we keep our mobile phone strictly for us to call out. Only immediate family have the number to call in.

As far as alg.exe is concerned, it loaded from the XP repair disk after the computer had a meltdown and I had to rebuild it. The disk includes up though SP3. I've read the Black Viper piece and I'll follow up.