xp suddenly takes almost an hour to load

[npisenti]

Hi--

I recently installed some software (adobe reader 8.0 and matlab), and now when I boot my computer into XP sp2 (I have a dual boot with ubuntu, if that helps), it will boot to the password screen fairly quickly, but then when i enter my password, it takes a while for the icons to appear (maybe a minute or two), and then it just sits there like it's hung for almost an hour while it loads all the programs into the task tray. If i try to shut down, it asks me to end programs such as "ACWLIcon.exe", "TpShocks.exe", and ACWinService.exe". I am led to believe that these are programs that should be running as part of normal system operation, but they take forever to load. When I open the task manager, it says that system idle is using 99% of the processor, when it should be trying to load windows completely. If i let the computer sit for an hour or so, it will have finished loading and everything appears to run fine.

My system is a lenovo thinkpad T60, 2.0 GHz, 2 GB ram, windows XP SP2 with a dual boot to ubuntu linux. Any help is greatly appreciated!

Thanks,
Neal

[fritzi93]

Those appear to be legitimate processes. The only listing i can find for acwinservice.exe is at CastleCops, but their site is under construction, so no details. Of the other two, one has to do with wireless connections, the other is a hard drive protection utility. Do you have any reason to suspect a hardware problem?

Before you do anything else, I'd do this: Start -> Run. Type in the following: "sfc /scannow" without the quotes and a space before the slash. Just to be sure there's no corrupted system files. Before looking at hardware, take the software angle. You mention a couple things recently installed. Adobe reader is buggy and bloated, suggest you uninstall it and replace it with this free reader:

http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/rd_intro.php

Haven't used Adobe in years, but as I recall, I had software conflicts and crashes with it. [shrugs] See if ditching it helps. You could also try a system restore if so inclined. I dunno about matrix laboratory, I doubt it would cause trouble in bootup, but maybe someone else knows?

Good luck.

[npisenti]

Thanks-- i tried the sfc /scannow, and it didn't fix the problem, but when i was looking over the add/remove program list, i realized that i had forgotten that I installed alcohol 120% as well just before the booting problem started. I uninstalled that first, and now everything works fine. Thanks for your suggestion though!

[DaveC2003]

According to both "The Register" and "The Inquirer". Both claim that Ubuntu takes a lot of space on the hard drive which maybe causing your PC to be slow.