MS WORD going south

Today I was working in WORD and encountered the following errors.

"Word failed reading from this file (~WRL2136.tmp). Please restore the network connection or replace the floppy disk and retry. "

"Word has lost data due to a bad network connection or missing floppy. Documents relying on this data are going to be saved and then closed. "

This began occurring a couple of days ago and is getting very annoying, because I do lose data, the first time it occurred I lost an entire two hours worth of work. I did do some "homework" on this before bothering you all with this problem, and the MS "help "/knowledge base was no help although it did document the problem and provided solutions as if the erroneous statements in their error message were true, but none of them were applicable…..because…

Note that I am NOT on a LAN/network and I am NOT using a "floppy disk" (as the error erroneously suggests that it somehow thinks that I am…). And I did find another complaint of this exact same problem (right down to the victim not using a floppy or being on a lan) on another forum, but unfortunately there was no solution documented there.

Just recently, I have started to encounter a similar but different error, dealing with the danged '~WRLnnn' files, pasted-in below…

"Word cannot complete the save due to a file permission error." "¦this followed by…

"There is an unrecoverable disk error on file ~WRL3434.tmp.
The disk you're working on has a media problem that prevents Word from using it. "

Note that on subsequent exit without saving the file, Word inquired whether or not to save the ~WRL3434.tmp file, altho the name of the file at the top of the Word panel was still the original file name... And, to restate, I was using Word and the Word files from the hard drive, not a floppy disk, and am NOT on a LAN…

Does anyone know why this is happening and what to do to fix it? I suppose someone may well suggest reinstalling WORD, but I would like to avoid that -- but if it is necessary to go that route, I have been curious lately about the new version of Word (XP?) and whether or not it was worth the effort to upgrade to that and what the cost is, and if with Office 2000 I can JUST upgrade Word only without major repercussions, and isn’t there a new version of Word coming out soon with "Office 2003" and is THAT worth it?

 

Keywester

More than likely this is not even a Word problem.

It is possible you have a pest. Or at least need a cleanup.

So do the below:

Spyware and adware removal

SpyBot http://security.kolla.de/index.php?lang=en&page=download
Run this twice delete all it finds, "ALWAYS" run this before AdAware.
Leave all it wants to leave after the second run.

AdAware 6.0 http://www.lavasoft.com/
Run only after SpyBot!
Make sure to configure to Max settings, all files and compressed files.Delete all it finds

D/L and update but do not run yet, this will be done in safe mode.

Registry and System cleaners

RegCleaner

http://www.vtoy.fi/jv16/shtml/regcleaner.shtml

Look in first 2 cols for programs you thought you uninstalled or removed, these are the dregs left by the uninstaller. Also tag and remove any that you are POSITIVE are not supposed to be on your computer.

After removing these go to the top Tools-Registry Cleanup-Do them all. Delete all it finds.

EasyClean1.7 http://gswi.com/downloads.htm
Run only unnecessary files and registry clean delete all it finds. If you have ME or XP in the "Unnessesary Files" type the word HELP in the skip box. Do not do Duplicate files!

RegScrubXP http://www.lexunfreeware.com/LexunFreeware.htm
NOTE: W2K and XP only!

Select RegScrub finds problems and remove all it finds.

After these are all downloaded reboot to safe mode and do them in this order.

First:

Configure CleanMgr to max settings
Go to Start-Run and type

cleanmgr /sageset:1
The above need only be ran once (these settings will be remembered as the default until another sageset is ran).

It will present a menu select all except compress, then

Go to Start-Run and type

cleanmgr /sagerun:1
As long as /sageset above has been ran on this computer from now on the /sagerun is the only thing that needs to run.

Then find and del all these ~temp etc files that Word wants to access. They are temp files and have nothing of importance if all your files already have the expected data. They are stopping you from saving new and updated files.

Then run the above in the same order presented.

If this seems overkill for only this specific problem it is not. Because you have more problems than you may think. This should get most if not all and these things will be there from now on for maintenance of your computer.

Reboot back to full and if you still have this problem exit Word and search for and delete a file called normal.dot in the word folder.

Additionally MS office has a repair option on the install disk that may help.

After you get it fixed go to the Windows Update site and chose Office update. Keep in mind this will be big and if you do not have broadband it will take a long time.

Good luck

Mike

 

Youch! There went my afternoon at the beach.

I halfway wondered if "a pest" might have something to do with this, as I have been encountering other new little strange problems lately also... At any rate, sounds like good advice, been meaning to do some of the things you suggested for a while anyway, so guess I will get to work on it...

Thanks Mike

 

It is not as complex and don't take as long as it looks like it would!

Yeah stay inside like us up here in NC, dank dreary misting ovecast day.

No more talk of beaches, it hurts!

Go to the dad gum beach and do this later!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Mike

 

Mike:

"The good, the ugly, and the bad "...

The GOOD news. I took your advice and dropped everything and went to the beach yesterday afternoon, but last night I did finally get through the procedure that you outlined to clean everything up, and it all went well, followed the instructions without incident, all the way down to (not) deleting 'normal.dot', etc.

Well, having said that, I attempted to do a system state backup before starting the procedure and it would NOT work, emitting a totally ambiguous error message -- so, I just created a restore point and went with it, figuring that the backup failure was just one more very strange phenomenon that has been occurring lately… Have not yet tried it again, but will later.

Back to the good. After a few hours of cranking this morning, WORD has not failed as it was doing prior to "the fix" (note that I never did find any of those ~WRL/temp files which I used to see all over the place - strange…). Plus, the problematic events (ie, AV's and firewall abnormally terminating behind the scenes) that had been surfacing under "component services" have gone away, so far…

Now for the UGLY (not quite bad, just ugly) news, mostly just worrisome after effects from the fix. The danged unauthorized / anonymous logons by GUID did not go away. If fact, regardless any assurances to the contrary, I am even more concerned. But first let me emphasize that (this concern is partly due to) when I hit safe mode, that danged phantom "ADMINISTRATOR" logon with the winpicks.com guitar icon was still there (no I have not rang their bell yet…) -- like the one that magically appeared on my non-safe-mode logon screen a while back that I deleted, and I am wondering if it has anything to do with the GUID intrusion (I did find and deleted the GUID cookie (even set it for "destroy" in cookie manager), but GUID still managed to pull off several logons this morning so either they have something else embedded on my system or they are getting in through the net…). The other part of this is that over the course of the morning there was a WHOLE LOT of suspicious (to me) logon activity (maybe 20-some occurences of) by numerous assorted unfamiliar components (along with several GUID logons), along with what appeared to be one normal logon by me myself. Now, I am wondering, does everyone else see the same thing, so maybe I am OK, or do I need to be concerned that there is still some kind of hanky panky goin on (minimally I would say that the GUID stuff should NOT be occurring based on the GUID info that I posted earlier in this thread…).

One other quandary related to logons -- under "component services ", then "services ", a "secondary logon" service displays as started; is this an essential service or an open door?

Pasted-in below are a couple of other "events" that I see way too often (still, this morning after the fix) to feel comfortable about, based on my limited paranoid knowledge. Note "warning" and "error ". Any comments on them?

Event Type: Warning
Event Source: Dhcp
Your computer has automatically configured the IP address for the Network Card with network address 000xxxxxxxx. The IP address being used is xxx.xxx.xxx.xx.

I did not verify, but am pretty sure that the IP address in the above warning was not mine, supposedly a constant static IP (using ADSL), unless it has changed since the last time I wrote it on the wall…

Event Type: Error
Event Source: Service Control Manager
The V7 service failed to start due to the following error: The system cannot find the file specified.

Note that I did google V7 and V7 Service but did not see anything relevant so I have no idea what this last one is all about, but it sure does happen a lot…


So, for the most part, so far, it would appear that the procedure that you recommended did the trick. Thanks for all the patient, expert advice…

btw, somewhere in all this last night (oh, it was the thread on "best little progs "), I ran into and downloaded SpyWare Blaster and XPantiSpy (hmmm, "XP anti Spy" = "X Panti Spy "?) and installed both of them. Any opinions on these two "little progs" anyone, as far as maybe having too much (redundant) anti-spy 'ware?

WELL JEEZ LOUISE! There is now some BAD news. Hold everything. I was "assembling" this post in Word and just got the error below that was occuring prior to all the cleanup to fix the problems. So I guess that it did not fix the Word problems (at least my system is "clean" now...), guess I better get on with the remaining instructions...

"Word cannot complete the save due to a file permission error "...(~WRL2934.tmp)
Noted an inconsistency -- sometimes when this occurs, the original file name appears at the top of Word panel, sometimes it is the tmp file name...go figure...

Well, time for my afternoon trip to the beach (for a de-stress workout, and a LITTLE ogle-ing of "thongs" before the late afternoon thunderstorms roll in...) - I will go ahead and post this and get back with you later on the effect of the remaining instructions once they are in place and check out the results for little while longer than I did today to make sure whats up...

FOOTNOTE: regarding the issue of not being able to find any ~WRL/temp files -- I switched over to 2xExplorer and it found a bunch of them. I gotta quit using that damned new Explorer, I keep forgetting that MS does not show their own MS underware -- bad habit from right clicking on the start button........ Anyway, the point is that they were NOT gone/deleted when I concluded that they were, but they are now. MAYBE that will make a difference... Outta here, going "thonging ", later...

 

keywester

I don't use Spyblaster so I don't know!

XpAntiSpy I do use and it is good! Use it and check the "Clear Pagefile" untill these problems are fixed.

Why did you keep Avast over AVG when Avast was noted as having problems in the event log?????

You have many issues, I believe you have a gremlin somewhere!

Logon as Administrator and go to Users and groups and delete any entries that you don't know or use. Try to find this rouge Administrator account you spoke of and remove it. Then browse to "Documents and settings" and remove any folders that match what you removed.

Download and install the below:

http://tomcoyote.org/hjt/

Use it to eliminate any suspicous entries pertaining to the things you have mentioned. Then use it to produce a "Startup List" and copy and paste it back to us in a message.

I already dread seeing it. When I get it I think I will cover my eyes and peep thru my fingers at first!

Update SpyBot again!

I would suggest you turn off the DSL connection and do the following.

1. Command prompt
type
ipconfig /flushdns

2. Control panel-Administrative tools-Services
find "DNS Client" and stop it and set it to "Disabled "
find "DHCP Client" and stop it and set it to "Disabled "

3. Reboot to Safe mode and run all the cleanups again. All things have changed since you have done the above.

4. After the above cleaning do a search for ~*.* and delete them

5. Kill the Normal.dot as I told you before.

6. Last before boot
command prompt
type

chkdsk /r

it will want to rebbot to finish this so let it

Back to full mode, insert MS Office Cd and run setup chose the option to repair.

Then reconnect DSL and see what now!

Mike

 

Hey Mike:

Well, I didn't really "keep Avast over AVG ". My reasoning to take AVG out of the startup was to see if it started up regardless, like Avast did, plus I already knew that Avast was going to fire up whether it was in the startup or not, and was kind of taking the quick route to your suggestion to get back to one resident AV, to avoid the possible conflict of concurrent AV's. But you make an excellent point there - I guess I will consider uninstalling Avast since it seems to have a mind of it's own about starting up. A parting point on this tho -- with AVG not running, Avast did not surface as croaking in an "event" all day/evening, so maybe the abnormal terminations were from contention with AVG as you suggested...

But meanwhile, I went back and addressed the final three items on your list that were to be done if the "cleanup" procedures did not resolve all of the issues that I was encountering, and "¦.

> Normal.dot was deleted successfully from the Word folder

> Performed the MS office repair option successfully (but did not note that anything of significance occurred)

> I checked into the update site to verify that I am up to date with the latest versions (I had just gone through grueling process of applying the most recent updates a few months ago) and there is not currently a newer update (than "SP-3 ") listed as available. Below are the confirmed product versions.

Microsoft Word 2000 Version 9.0.0.6926 SP-3

Microsoft Office 2000 Small Business Edition Version 9.0.1423 SP-3
Microsoft Office 2000 Version 9.0.3508 SP-3
Microsoft Office 2000 Version 9.0.3720 SP-3
Microsoft Office 2000 Version 9.0.6627 SP-3
Microsoft Office 2000 Version 9.0.6926 SP-3

So, even tho not much came out of the final three steps, I am going back to shake things down for the remainder of the night to see what happens, even tho I don’t expect much of a difference.

After it becomes clear whether or not problems still exist, I will get to work on your latest suggestions, likely tommorow tho.

One more thing. I have been putting off doing a hard drive defrag for a long time because the last time that I tried that I got burned by losing some system dll's and diagnosis and recovery from that was a little traumatic for me. Would that be something to avoid for now or something to consider as a potential remedy? If it might be a good idea: would a "system state" backup be adequate for recovery from possible problems (unable to do a full backup as my external hard drive has not worked since migrating to XP, driver problems…), and would it be advisable to use the built in XP defrag or go with third party software (freeware preferably)?

Thanks again...

 

Hey Mike,

Well, Word did NOT improve after finishing the final three steps of your original outline of things to do - it is still doing the same things (maybe it is close to time to consider reinstalling Word?).

On your suggestion to do admin on users: been there done that, and additionally performed same in safe mode where the danged winpicks.com guitar "Admin" logon STILL appears EVEN THO it does not show up under "users ". Just my logon and "guest" which is turned off. Go figure… I will try to find the rogue admin account although not sure how -- guess I will contact winpicks to see what they have to say…

On your suggestion to check "clear pagefile" in XpantiSpy - had NOT done that, but just did. The only remaining questionable (to me) item not checked is "disable task scheduler service ".

Ran "HijackThis ", did not see too much out of the ordinary, although I was a little surprised to see 2 entires surface for Symantec and 2 entries for "net2phone ", which I then eradicated. Also decided to knock out an activex control on fcsworldnet that was probably harmless but seemed out of place. The remainder MOSTLY looks OK, although there are a few items that I really have no idea what they are (like "02 - BHO, no file, no name "), but could be OK and essential so left them there... So, guess I will go ahead and paste the hijack output in here for perusal as I do not anticipate any major breakthroughs with the remaining suggested attempts at fixing problems -- which I will probably tackle in the AM.

Rather than clutter up this thread with 4 pages of the startup list output, will try to send it to you via email first, plus I should probably wait until I switch back to AVG to make it look like it should/will look...probably tomorow, gotta take care of business...

 

Keywester

Come on now!

Did these Word problems not start when you doubled up on the virus scanners.

You need to uninstall both then run the registry cleans to finish the job.

Get rid of the unknown BHO.

Use Startup Control panel or StartupCop to disable the execution of all unnnessesary stuff, IWON, QUICKTIME, FSII etc. Even the Broadjump stuff is really unnessesary.

But eliminate all, then if things are fixed with word then go back 1st with AVG, then reenable the others one at a time slowly untill you find the problem. I really feel it is one of these!

Mike

 

Hey Mike,

Yep, you are correct, the Word problems and all of the other out of the ordinary stuff started within a day or two or three AFTER the uninstalls and installs of firewalls and AV's (but not immediately after -- I keep of log of modifications, and any problems, for the purpose of analyis so I know this to be fairly accurate...).

My next planned step was to uninstall Avast cause even tho I took it out of the startup again, it still fired up it's three resident modules consuming it's 28 meg with high priority, and I guess that not being able to control it's execution eliminates it from further consideration.

So, later today, after uninstalling Avast, assuming that the problems will not go away just with that, I plan to get back to finishing up your second set of reccomendations, followed closely by the reccos on your latest post.

But I should mention here that I finally did a full disk scan for 'winpicks' (the freeware that somehow seems to have managed to set up it's own rogue admin logons, maybe related to the GUID anonymous logons) and found about 30 hits that looked suspicious. They were all "files" with something about the registry in the file names, which looked like this: "_REGISTRY_USER_NTUSER_S-1-5-21-507921405-1957994488-1343024091-1004 ". Note that these files reside in the system volume information folder, in a "_restore" subfolder, with some gobbledy-gook numbers followed by a "snapshot" folder. About 3 or 4 of these files created per day, going back to the exact day that I installed the freeware from the winpicks.com site. Make any sense? Sounds like there might still be something in the registry for that, altho I did not see anything for it, will check on that right away... EDIT-- Of interest pertaining to this item: I also did a scan of the same folders and found a lot of other similar entries to this, which is what I expected... Does that mean anything? Oh, no I did not open the files that were found in searching for "winpicks ", MS Win did not know what to open them with, and beng in sysvol was not sure that I should toy with them unless in safe mode - should I to see what is in them? NOTE: as previously indicated, I did uninstall the winpicks software as soon as I saw the phantom admin logons with their guitar icon next to them, but these files are still being created...

Anyway, note some good news. I have had an ongoing problem with Word where pasting in HTML into a Word doc stalled the system badly, and accidently did that yesterday and amazingly the problem has gone away, likely due to something with uninstalling NIS, as Word tries to do outgoing access for HTML pastes and NIS was stopping it (because I eventually blocked it -- but it stalled even before blocking it via NIS). Anyway, Word pastes HTML in a flash now, some progress......

Thanks again for all your patience and advice, hopefully we can close this out soon...

 

Mike:

Addendum to post a while back on the phantom admin logons, which I am bothering with because I am now a little more suspicious about that more than ever....

I went into safe mode to knock out Avast. Noticed that the second "Administrator" account with the winpicks.com guitar icon was still there (only in safe mode, I deleted the same account on non-safe mode logon screen...). Previously in this safe mode logon, I had always logged onto my valid admin account, and suspiciously the phantom admin account did not show up there, just my logon and "guest" which is always turned off. Well, this time I dared to log into the safe mode phantom admin account, and note that it did not require a password. I was surprised at how radically different (from my admin account) the setup was in that bogus account, only a few icons and a different look, not even the "classic" look, not really sure, it was so different. Anyway, the really significant issue was that going into user admin on the bogus account, I could of course not delete it, as it has to be done by another admin account. And since it does not show up on my normal valid admin account, it is a "catch 22" and curiously indestructible (well to noobs like me it is, likely most of you guys can eradicate anything), arousing further suspicions on my part.... Might not mean much, but logic would seem to indicate that this could in some way be nefarious...

EDIT -- FYI, I did plunk in a password into the untouchable safe mode bogus logon while I was in the bogus admin account, just in case it is being used somehow, thinking that might slow down or maybe even prevent the perps from using it...

Am I maybe on to something ?

 

Mike:

I managed to accomplish all the tasks that you outlined for me, not all went as smoothly as expected, some minor aberrations, but nothing major, UNTIL I got ready to reinstall AVG.

EDIT: skip the rest of this, the "problem" outlined herein was solved and I am now back to ground zero with just AVG running (wellll, as an interim precaution, suddenly being without ANY antivirus, I did install an "f-prot" trial, but have since taken it out of the startup and it does not forcibly invoke itself like Avast did...) and will now do some "shaking down" to see what MIGHT be working better...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I started to do this not just twice, but three times to be absolutely certain that I was not doing something wrong. Initially, to reinstall AVG, I clicked on the 'avg6478fu_free.exe' file that was still in my download folder. Up pops an "AVG 6.0 Anti-Virus System Free Edition Setup" box - I clicked on the "setup" button. The next box to pop up is "xp-AntiSpy Setup ". Three times, and disbelieving I finally go ahead and go thru the process, and it installs not AVG, but xpantispy just like it said it was going to do, no AVG...

I even went thru the entire process a second time, just in case I missed something, but it did the exact same thing.

So, thinking that I have a messed-up download file, I re-download AVG, and you guessed it, same exact results...installs xpAntiSpy yet again with the new download file, just opened, and does not install AVG... Yeh, I uninstalled xpantispy and tried again.

So here I sit, online without an AV, having thought of numerous "things" I could try, but rather than waste hours painstakingly trudging through various trial and error processes that might, but probably would not help this latest situation, thought I would post this latest quandary and head for the beach for my daily workout before coming back and trying again. I will check for suggestions when I get back before shooting in the dark. Any advice appreciated. Yes I did reboot… Later…

Doesn't ANYTHING work anymore ??????????? FYI, powerup and powerdown cycle has went from about 30 seconds to around two to three minutes, all in the course of the last , say 24 to 36 hours, when I would have thought with all the cleanup and uninstalling that it would have conversely gone faster, but what do I know...Outta here, later...

EDIT: I guess this last week of constant turmoil and frustration has degraded my problem determination to a negligible level, as the problem with the avg install invoking the xpantispy install was remedied by simply moving the avg install exe to a folder by itself and executing it there (back in the overloaded downloads folder the avg exe was obviously somehow invoking the setup for xpantispy), credit goes to v.dr forum for hitting me over the head with that solution...i am so embarassed at not being able to fathom that...

 

Hey Mike,

Something that I just recalled that in my frazzled mental state had been getting away from me, that may or may not shed some light on this situation. About two or three months ago, I saw something, I think it was a file, which was worded/named something like "You have been hacked! ". That was about it, nothing tangible along with it, kind of ignored it after not seeing where there was much more to it than that, thinking that it might have something to do with a popup that did more than popup, maybe in an attempt to worry noobs into buying a security prog. ANYWAY, in the process of cleaning things up in the last couple of days, I briefly stumbled over it again, but unfortunately was in the midst of a mess that was hard to handle, so just kind of ignored it and went on bumbling away at the cleanup process. But in retrospect thought I should mention it in case it maybe ties in somehow with all of the suspiciously mysterious goings-on with rogue admin logins that cannot be eradicated, "anonymous" logons, warnings of potential security problem events, security audit failure events, and so on…

Speaking of the latter, the bad news at this point is that I am still seeing way too much of the aforementioned incomprehensible-to-me stuff in event logs, plus I know that the rogue admin logon is still there (albeit with a changed password now…), and the illicit GUID logons are still occurring even tho nothing shows up for that on my PC and the theoretically offending GUID cookie has been deleted.

However, at this point in time (admittedly not terribly far along since completing your list of fixes..), that may appear to be somewhat irrelevant, since almost all (if not all?) of the other numerous quirky problems that surfaced in the last couple of weeks have diminished, or maybe disappeared. That appears to include the Word problem, so far, as I have been working in Word off and on for a total of over an hour this morning and have not been hit with any of the errors that started this whole resolution process (and typically I was encountering the Word errors anywhere from "right away" to usually starting within about an hour -- the outliers ranged up to two hours max). Anyway, the Word problem seems to have improved drastically based on the recent typical frequency of problems, and HOPEFULLY may have gone away entirely (somehow I doubt that tho…).

Well, running behind on preps for the weekend, will probably be "off the air" most of the time 'til next Tuesday (but I'll probably sneak out of bed in the middle of the night and power up to see what's going on here). Thanks again for all the patient expert advice (I learned a lot…), and as I said in the other thread, have a nice long safe relaxing kickback holiday -- I will try to send some of this "warm" SoFla weather up your way for the weekend, but don't breathe it in too deeply, you might catch the contagious illness that is going around down here -- "ROOCS" (rampant, out of control stupidity)…

 

Hey Mike;

Just a followup FYI -- the original Word problem has been resolved, as well as a few others, altho I am back to ground zero on pre-set formatting, etc...no big deal on that...

And, most of the other bizzare problems that I was experiencing seem to have also gone away.

The only remaining pre-existing problems are with the numerous anonymous ( "GUID ") logons and the bogus/phantom (winpicks.com?) admin logon in safe mode that is a catch 22 when it comes to eradicating it, which I will deal with... maybe in another post...

But long story short, in the final analysis, your suggested fixes seem to have resolved "the problem" and even some other problems. Which reminds me, another problem not addressed in this thread, but was in another thread, is that I had been encountering a severe system degredation problem pasting HTML into Word, and noticed by accident that it has now gone back to normal with a quick paste...

All in all, thanks a meg... If I win the lottery, I will be sending you a check... jb

 

Good news Keywester

Forget the so called phantom Admin account. It dawned on me you are refering to the XP home Administrator account. The true administrator account, and in XP Home the only way to get to it is in safe mode.

The Guitar pick is a normal XP User Icon!

So all is actually fixed!

mike

 

I don't know about that... No doubt it has slipped by you that immediately after installing a freeware package from winpicks.com, the exact same phantom admin account surfaced on my regular logon screen (NON safe mode) with the exact same guitar icon as the one still remaining in safe mode, which is precisely the exact same guitar icon that they feature on their site, so I remain suspicious and still intend to ask them to clarify why that happened. May have been something I missed in the EULA, likely innocent, but I am going to resolve the issue...

Thanks again for the education...

 

1) on the establishment of the phantom admin logons, I have been informed that the .NET framework does that and that it is supposedly "harmless "

2) in retrospect I do have a remaining concern that is somewhat perplexing; my boot-up time is now 3+ minutes, whereas before all the cleaning and fixing it was only about 30 seconds; the only new components in the startup are AVG and Outpost (replacing NIS and NAV); up until the mid part of that 3+ minutes the hard drive is being accessed, but for about the last 1.5 minutes there seems to be absolutely no system activity, but finally the system frees up and the few icons that I have left on the screen do pop up; is there a good way to diagonse this condition? maybe put a monitor into the startup to see what is going on, or would a monitor stall in that resource intensive situation?

EDIT: shutdown time was not affected and is still fairly good...

 

Keywester

Yes that is correct on the M$ dot net frames.

First you said "maybe" on my statement about the Safe Mode Administrator account. No, not maybe but absolutely, in (XP Home only) it is the only true built in Administrator account and cannot be removed. And the only time you will see it is in safe mode! You can add other Administrator accounts but this is the only master account.

Now that does not rule out something you got or had from Winpicks.com. But the use of that specific Icon for the safe mode Admin account is the M$ default. BUT, this particular Icon is just another Icon and therefore can be used anywhere anytime for any program. And is used by winpicks.

Now as for your slow boot. Download and run BootViz read the help on how to use it. (Link below). It will give you the times it takes each step in bootup. You are going to find that it is either looking for or trying to init a driver, software or HW, finally gives up and boots. Or is looking for a DNS or Internet link.

I know you did all the cleanups I recommended once at least. But then you installed dual virus scanners and a couple of other new programs you were tinkering with if I remember. So one of these may have left a bad registry entry or driver so I say do all the cleanups again!

Normally a slightly longer boot time will occur after cleaning the prefetch untill it rebuilds the prefetch. This usually takes a few boots. So if you leave on 24/7 and don't boot often it can take longer since it only builds or adds to the prefetch on boot. Check the prefetch folder and see if it is starting to rebuild.

BootViz: http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/hwdev/platform/performance/fastboot/BootVis.mspx

How to use BootViz: http://www.weethet.nl/english/hardware_bootvis.php

Other links related to this:
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/hwdev/platform/performance/fastboot/default.mspx

http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,3772129~root=winme~mode=flat

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/hwdev/driver/XP_kernel.mspx

http://www.neoseeker.com/Articles/Hardware/Guides/winxptweak/6.html

At this site (SubZero) look for PrefetcherTweakXP reg file.
http://www.subzeropc.com/downloads/

http://www.tek-tips.com/gviewthread.cfm/lev2/5/lev3/60/pid/581/qid/337688

This ought to keep you busy and out of trouble and off the Dad Gum Beach for a while!! Hee hee!

Mike