Resolved Very slow access to various Windows Desktop shortcuts

I'm stumped: I had a friend drop his computer off for me to look at. I'm a retired computer repair shop owner and enjoy a challenge once in a while. I started the shop a long time ago .. over 30 years ago. Yes several years before the first IBM PC was invented. Although I was the owner and was not that involved in the technical repairs, I had a good crew of techs working for me and I learned a few things along the way.

My friend actually brought his computer to my old shop, where they also were stumped and offered to re-format the drive and re-install Windows from scratch. He asked me for advice and I told him that in all my years of owning computers, I've only had to do a Windows re-install once. So I said, "let me have it over the weekend and see if I can find something ".

That was two weeks ago. And I'm not getting anywhere with the problem.

Here's the situation:

If you double-click on the "My Computer" icon on the desktop, it takes 50 to 60 seconds to open up. Also the recycle bin, network places and some other desktop window related shortcuts on the desktop all do the same thing. Other regular non-windows Icons open instantly. Accessing the <start / programs> list works instantly. Operation with everything is normal and the computer is pretty fast.

So doubling clicking the desktop "My Computer" Icon takes almost a minute. However if I right-click the "My Computer" icon to access a context menu, I can choose "explore" and I have instant access. In fact all but one of the context menu items open instantly EXCEPT for the context menu item "open ". That has the same one minute delay (timed at 56 seconds) when opening it. Note that just getting the right-click context menu listing is instant. When I force the problem by double clicking the My Computer short-cut, I get the busy hour glass for about 2 seconds. Then nothing for the next minute until I finally get into Windows File explorer. I have also opened task manager and can see no programs listed there as long as the My Computer request was being delayed. Then after 50 or so seconds Task Mananger will have the program show up in the "Applications" tab.

Here is what I've done so far:

Broadband internet service disconnected from NIC for testing purposes.
Booted computer to a dedicated hardware diagnostic disk (not windows) and ran all tests over-night. No problems.
Did benchmark of hardware and system. No performance issues. Hard drive thruput is excellent

System is Windows XP Home SP3, NTFS file system. All patches, updates etc are current.

No external devices are attached: (only KB, Mouse and Monitor)
Antivirus program (AVG latest) is disabled

Disk drive is a WD 80 GB SATA 7200, one partition C: drive, and the used space is only 9 GB with 70 GB free space.
A second HD has been removed for testing purposes, along with 2 floppies. The DVD Burner is the only other drive in the system at this point.
HD is Defragged and checked for errors a second time - no problems
Ran portable versions of various anti-virus aps from my diagnostic USB Flash Drive

No problems found doing full and deep scans
Cleaned the drive of every kind of junk file known to man <grin>
Ran various registry apps and performed deep scans.

Defragged the registry - Is clean and lean.
Disk Indexing is turned off.

I've applied the Registry fixes that have been suggested for this problem.
I've disable WIA services

I believed from the beginning that this was a windows problem and not a hardware issue. But I still went through everything anyway. Once you get the windows explorer (or any of the other problem short cuts) opened access to everything is virtually instant. In fact I'm pretty impressed at how well and fast this PC runs for a small basic machine with a small Celeron CPU.

This problem only cropped up about a month ago, and my friend and my old repair shop have not been able to find a fix. Like I said, the techs at the shop suggested a full re-install of Windows, which would be the cheapest and quickest repair. So the computer is sitting here at my house and it's now become a challenge more than anything else.

Any one want to weigh in on this? Like I said, "I'm stumped ".

Rich

 

Thanks Pete,

I checked my "junk box" of old operating systems disks and believe it or not, I don't have a copy of XP home. I'm familiar with "slipstreaming" and as soon as a new SP comes out, I usually burn a copy with all the updates.

I'll call my buddy tonight and have him stop by with his OEM copy. I'll make a slipstream copy for him.

I just remembered something else I haven't tried. SFC. I figure I'll give that a try before I resort to a windows repair.

By the way. I've been browsing this forum recently and am a new member.
I think I've found a nice place to hang out.

Thanks for such a swift response. I'll follow up with an update soon.

- Rich

 

This is just a shot in the dark but AVG (the most recent version) has been on this forum quite a lot recently causing various problems, usually BSOD's. I just thought it might be worth uninstalling it with the AVG removal tool just to see if things improve. Is there any third party firewall installed as some firewall software has been shown to cause issues with AVG.

You've most likely already checked but are there any programs visible in Task Manager that are hogging memory or the CPU.

 

Thanks for the reminder Pete. All of my windows versions I've owned are the retail packages. Didn't even think about he "OEM" issue. It's just another reason I've been looking for another solution. I'm sure the guys at the shop have a retail version of Win XP Home. As a last resort I'll visit them after the weekend.

For "markmadras ". One of the first things I did was to check AVG and turn off some of the features. I know some features can cause problems. What I actually did was to make a "clone" of my buddies original C: drive and I've been working with that. I have deleted AVG entirely. Also while the delay is going on, CPU use is almost zero. Plenty of unused memory. Nothing is really running. AND I might add that during that one minute while I'm waiting for "My Computer" to pop up, I can open and run other programs without a problem. It's really quite bizarre. <grin> Right now I have NO anti-virus, firewall or anything else running. Although it is not connected to the Internet I even have the NIC disabled. Just about everything is disconnected or disabled. For my money I'm betting this is a windows OS specific problem.

Having a "clone" of his original drive allows me a lot options without screwing up his original drive. Before I go the "repair" route, I think I'm going to start deleting various MS updates and such.

- Rich

 

Still no Joy

I'm afraid even a repair of the existing system didn't help. "My Computer" is taking around 1 full minute to open up.

I have only one more thing to try. And that is to do a fresh install of Windows. I don't want to do that if at all possible. As I said earlier I've only had to do a complete fresh install once before in all the time I've been working with computers.

This guy has a lot of "stuff" going on in his computer, and I don't think he has all the application original disks.

I'm only proceeding now because it's become a challenge. But I'm getting close to just installing a clean Windows system and telling him to re-install all his programs from scratch.

To rehash the problem. "My Computer Icon" on the desktop takes no LESS than 57 seconds to open. Also most of the "Windows system" Icons also take one minute to open. All the other short cut Icons and programs work normally. And instead of opening My Computer, you can instantly open up it's context menu and explore it instantly.

Good this isn't his day-to-day computer.

 

Not a lot left that you haven't tried, I just have a couple of suggestions which are a bit of a shot in the dark. Try making new shortcuts for any that are working slowly. Creating and running the system under a new user profile.

 

This might be a wild shot, but not all that long ago I was transferring the contents of a HD that was getting to small over to a new and bigger HD but I did have heaps of stuff on that drive that I did not want to loose, but at the same time the Windows installation XP Pro SP3 was as you might call well worn, many years old.
Since I run more than one PC I installed a new WD black edition HD on one of the other PC's and installed a new copy of XP Pro slipstreamed SP3 edition onto it. I then got myself a copy of PC Mover and one of them USB transfer cables and transferred all the stuff I wanted to keep, files and programs over to the new OS, it worked a treat for me, once all completed I installed the HD back into the relevant PC. OK in your case a new or old formatted HD would be necessary.
This computer it is actually the machine I am posting this with, it has been running great for several month now.
Point: Clean fresh install of Windows, retained all my files and programs.
The original HD I then formatted, and is now my backup drive.

hawk22

 

That's interesting hawk22, I used to think that apart from stand alone software this copying method would not. I thought most software had to be installed after the OS because of certain entries that go into the registry during the install process.

It would be interesting to know for sure if this can work with all software. If so, then your method could come in very usefull especially for Rich A who has a hard drive full of software that would take hours to re-install and some may not be replaceable.

 

Hi Mark, there is only very few software that will not work according to LapLink and most of that relates to Anti Virus and the like software, apart from that anything I had transfered and believe me I had some very old stuff and some new video editing stuff as well. The thing I liked most unlike cloning software that I was looking at to start with, I did not want all the garbage transfered, so you can pick and chose what you want. I did transfer some 60 GIG and as you know via USB is not the fastest.
As I said this method suited me perfectly for what I wanted to do. Not free, but then we can't always have it both ways.

My most important reason though was I wanted a new clean install of Windows.

hawk22

 

Thanks guys .. Those are a couple great ideas. I've never used that program that Hawk22 mentioned. Since I would not be changing anything in the OS environment (Staying with a XP Home to XP Home) I would think this would be the most likely to work.

I did notice something that was strange last night while putzing with it. He only has a "My Computer" shortcut on the desk top. The actual "My Computer" is missing from the <start> panel options. Normally one would drag that My Computer (from the Start menu) to the desktop which would create a short cut their. He's got the My Computer short cut icon on the desk top but it is missing from the <start> pop up display. That might be something ??

This buddy of mine is a fellow Ham Radio operator and this PC is his "radio" PC that is chock full of applications and electronic hardware specific to our hobby.

He has several serial ports and some other hardware that interface with some of his radios and equipment. He needs some legacy support for various I/O devices that will only run in a DOS environment. Most of the DOS only stuff is on a second hard drive that is running a FAT32 DOS system.

I only mention this as it is why we are trying to keep the complicated setup intact. Note! This computer is about 5 years old and I helped him build it. It's been running 100 percent perfectly up until about two months ago. No hardware or software changes have been made in at least a year. Even so, I pulled the DOS system drive out and disconnected "everything" else while trying to fix this thing.

Anyway, I'll find out where I can get that transfer program and give that a shot. Thanks for the ideas. Oh and I have an external E-Sata box with provisions for running 2 drives. I can do the multiple disk transfers with that which should go pretty quickly.

 

Hi Rich, have a look here, you might find a solution to bring my computer back into the start menu, it seems to be a common problem.
Some hits that I googled seem to recommend to disable it first from the Registry and then reverse the action. Your guys might know something about that.

http://www.techtalkz.com/windows-xp/509124-my-computer-missing-start-menu-2.html

I will try and find the link for you for PCMover as I got it for half prize.

hawk22

Found it, but I would recommend to you to go to the LapLink website and have a read for yourself about the features of this program. here it is:

http://store.pcauthority.com.au/?act=search&brand=76

the store is actually in the UK and not Australia

 

Problem Solved

I finally found the problem. And am happy I didn't have format and install a new Windows Op system.

The owner only had two users (with Admin priv) and a guest account. And the User account was corrupted. What made it so hard to find was that this corruption didn't really affect anything other than the time it took to open windows specific shortcut files on the desktop. There was no crashing or other anomalies.

As soon as I figured out the problem the fix was relatively simple.

I created two user accounts, which I'll refer to as "temp" and "new ". The original account we'll call "old ", which was the corrupted one.

Then I just needed to copy all but these files,

NTuser.dat
Ntuser.dat.log
Ntuser.ini

to the "new" account's "Documents" folder.

And blow away the temp and old user profiles. That enabled me to retain all the settings, paths etc. without having to install a fresh copy of Windows.

Note that a normal Windows "Repair" did not solve the problem.

For more detailed info on this look at this link:

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-vista/Fix-a-corrupted-user-profile

Thanks all the help and ideas to all who responded. My buddy has his computer back home and I'm going back to my Windows 7 Pro 64-bit system. (which I love btw)

Oh, I read somewhere on this BBS that one should mark the thread "Resolved" but couldn't remember how to do it ?? So I just put that note in the subject.

 

Nice to hear how you fixed that, so it was a user profile problem as I suggested back in post 8, the very last idea I could think of. I hope I can remember the symptons the next time such a problem crops up.