StarKist said:
BUT, the PC is still having the VERY slow boot up problem. Do you guys know what this slow boot problem is most indicative of?
Given that your Mom is likely not real computer literate, I'd guess that she has a lot of programs loading automatically at startup... one indication of that is a whole bunch of icons in the system tray... there is simply no need to have RealPlayer and programs like that load at startup, all that does is causes them to load a hair faster when you first open them... however, they will still load up just fine... in addition, there is no bigger resource waster than your average chat programs like MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, ICQ et al... I have known folks who had just about every chat program in creation on their computer, and it slowed that poor PC to a crawl...
If that's the case with your Mom, tell her to pick one chat program, and stick with it... really, who needs more than one anyway??
As others have noted, you can configure which programs load automatically at startup by goint to Start/Run, typing in msconfig in the box, then clicking on the Startup tab... you'll find a list of all the programs set to load startup, and by unclicking the box by each program, remove that program from the startup process... if you look at the file names, you can figure out which one does what, and if you have any question at all, simply don't click on that one... for example, the MSN Messenger chat program appears as msmsgs...
Ideally, you shouldn't have more than five or six programs running in the system tray (down by the clock)... mine at home has the icon for Norton Antivirus, one for Norton Internet Security, one for the Weatherbug, and that's it... I like to have those programs running at all times...
I am speculating that there is still something running in the back ground or else I would have been able to run chkdsk in normal mode.
I don't think so, it works that way on my PC, on the nephew's, and on all the PCs here at work (I'm responsible for the maintenance of those computers)... I think that's just the way XP is designed...
P.S. Thanks to everyone here for the advice. It's been invaluable help today, just short of throwing the PC out the third story window.
Trust me, we've ALL been there-- and more than once... I had a moment just like that a week ago, when I got a Dell prompt that told me my hard drive had just died... turns out it was right, but I had taken out the extended warranty, so I got it replaced for free.. I even got upgraded, from a Western Digital 100GB to a Seagate 160GB... and I had the new hard drive by Tuesday...
Dell's support is everything they claim... I don't even mind that my money helped finance "Steve's" pot habit... LOL...
