MY SYSTEM TAKES A LONG TIME TO GET TO THE LOGIN SCREEN. THE DISPLAY IS BLACK (BLANK) DURING THIS TIME. IT HAS GOTTEN PROGRESSIVELY WORSE OVER TIME. TODAY IT WAS STARTED AT 7:00 A.M. AND AND FINALLY CAME ON AT 11:00 A.M.I HAVE MCAFEE ANTIVIRUS PLUS AND ALSO TUNEUP UTILITIES. BOTH UP-TO-DATE. THE SYSTEM WORKS FINE ONCE IT STARTS. IT RUNS FAST AND SEEMS NORMAL AS LONG AS I KEEP IT RUNNING.THIS IS AN ABS COMPUTER PURCHASED NEW ABOUT 6 YEARS AGO. IT IS A PENTIUM 4, 3.2GHZ WITH 2GB RAM.1 person got this answerI do too

MY SYSTEM TAKES A LONG TIME TO GET TO THE LOGIN SCREEN. THE DISPLAY IS BLACK (BLANK) DURING THIS TIME. IT HAS GOTTEN PROGRESSIVELY WORSE OVER TIME. TODAY IT WAS STARTED AT 7:00 A.M. AND AND FINALLY CAME ON AT 11:00 A.M.I HAVE MCAFEE ANTIVIRUS PLUS AND ALSO TUNEUP UTILITIES. BOTH UP-TO-DATE. THE SYSTEM WORKS FINE ONCE IT STARTS. IT RUNS FAST AND SEEMS NORMAL AS LONG AS I KEEP IT RUNNING.THIS IS AN ABS COMPUTER PURCHASED NEW ABOUT 6 YEARS AGO. IT IS A PENTIUM 4, 3.2GHZ WITH 2GB RAM.Although there are many reasons why a computer running Windows XP might be slow, your situation seems a bit different than most. AFAIK, most antivirus applications don't do their initial boot scans until a user logs on, but McAfee may do it differently. Can you configure McAfee to skip the boot scan or startup scan or whatever it's called?What happens if you start the computer in Safe Mode (press F8 as soon as the initial manufacturer's logo or BIOS splash screen quits)?Another possibility (although it should also make your computer seem very slow during normal operation) is if the hard drive is operating in PIO mode instead of DMA mode. SeeDMA reverts to PIO

I recommend clicking on startmenu/run. type msconfig. When that loads click on the 2nd option. Diag. Startup. Then go to the startup tab and make sure to have checked whatever you may need to run a startup. Like antivirus program for sure. Click apply and reboot. If it still takes forever to load then you may have another issue besides to many things loading at startup."There are only 10 types of people in the world. Those that understand binary, and those that don't." [_1337_Pete_]

COMPUTER STARTUP PROBLEMThanks for your help and here is an update on my problem. I have tried your suggestions, i.e. removed startup programs, cleaned and defragmented the registry, done a complete scan with McAfee which found a bunch of tracking cookies but nothing else. I used my TuneUp 2010 utilities to do every kind of maintenance available including removing some old programs. The system was running as good as new after all this.So I tried a restart and the restart was completed in seconds. Then I tried a power shutdown and startup after about 5 minutes off. Everything went well, booted up in a very short time. I really thought the problem was fixed. The computer was then turned off and left off for about 4-5 hours until later last night. I decided to fire it up before I went bed and it was back to exactly the same problem. After a couple of hours the login screen finally came up.I noticed there is one thing that isn’t completely clear in my initial problem statement. When the computer is started I don’t get the boot-up flash or anything. The display is blank (black) from the time I push the power button until the login screen comes up. It may show the boot routine just before the login screen appears, but I can’t say one way or the other since I don’t sit and watch it for this long period.One more thing: About three years ago there was a startup problem that I called the ABS tech support about. I don’t remember the details of the problem now but the tech told me to remove the BIOS battery and reinstall it to reset the BIOS (I have this in my notes). I did this and the problem, at that time, went away. I tried the same thing yesterday morning thinking for sure it would fix the problem but it didn’t. I checked the battery (CR2032) while I had it removed and its voltage was good, 3.26 volts. When I powered on the computer (after removing and replacing the battery) it stopped during booting with the following screen showing that a CMOS checksum error had occurred and defaults were loaded. I let it continue to boot up. Maybe the BIOS chip is bad?? After this my email wasn’t working right so I called my email service provider tech and after trying to get the email working he suspected that McAfee was interfering and causing problems. He was right. I removed McAfee from the computer and then the email worked normally. A while later (after being shut down about 3 hours) I powered it up and the login screen appeared after about 20 minutes wait.I’m going to call ABS tech support and when I get the problem resolved I will post the fix.Any more suggestions or ideas?

COMPUTER STARTUP PROBLEMThanks for your help and here is an update on my problem. I have tried your suggestions, i.e. removed startup programs, cleaned and defragmented the registry, done a complete scan with McAfee which found a bunch of tracking cookies but nothing else. I used my TuneUp 2010 utilities to do every kind of maintenance available including removing some old programs. The system was running as good as new after all this.So I tried a restart and the restart was completed in seconds. Then I tried a power shutdown and startup after about 5 minutes off. Everything went well, booted up in a very short time. I really thought the problem was fixed. The computer was then turned off and left off for about 4-5 hours until later last night. I decided to fire it up before I went bed and it was back to exactly the same problem. After a couple of hours the login screen finally came up.I noticed there is one thing that isn’t completely clear in my initial problem statement. When the computer is started I don’t get the boot-up flash or anything. The display is blank (black) from the time I push the power button until the login screen comes up. It may show the boot routine just before the login screen appears, but I can’t say one way or the other since I don’t sit and watch it for this long period.One more thing: About three years ago there was a startup problem that I called the ABS tech support about. I don’t remember the details of the problem now but the tech told me to remove the BIOS battery and reinstall it to reset the BIOS (I have this in my notes). I did this and the problem, at that time, went away. I tried the same thing yesterday morning thinking for sure it would fix the problem but it didn’t. I checked the battery (CR2032) while I had it removed and its voltage was good, 3.26 volts. When I powered on the computer (after removing and replacing the battery) it stopped during booting with the following screen showing that a CMOS checksum error had occurred and defaults were loaded. I let it continue to boot up. Maybe the BIOS chip is bad?? After this my email wasn’t working right so I called my email service provider tech and after trying to get the email working he suspected that McAfee was interfering and causing problems. He was right. I removed McAfee from the computer and then the email worked normally. A while later (after being shut down about 3 hours) I powered it up and the login screen appeared after about 20 minutes wait.I’m going to call ABS tech support and when I get the problem resolved I will post the fix.Any more suggestions or ideas?

Gettingrid of McAfee was a good idea. You do need a good active antivirus application. For free ones, I suggestAvast! or Microsoft Security Essentials . For a commercial antivirus, I suggest NOD32 Antivirus 4 (not the "suite") from eset.In addition to a regularly updated antivirus application that is always running in the background, you should periodically (at least once/week) scan withMalwarebytes Antimalware and SUPERAntiSpyware (both free).The BIOS error probably was caused by your removal of the battery. I wouldn't worry about it unless the error re-appears.I don't know what TuneUp 2010 does, but if it includes "cleaning" the registry, I strongly suggest that you omit that part of the "cleanup." So-called tune-up utilities can often do more harm than they cure. You might take a look at MVP Malke's suggestions for regular maintenance instead.

I say dump McAfee. I have not heard but problems and more problems. I prefer ZASS, KISS or ESET NOD32. Not much difference btwn ZASS and KISS (ZASS uses Kaspersky Anti-everything).Follow 3-step instructions at bottom link. Bootvis may speed things 10-50% depending on applications.Did you ever download files >500MB? Did you delete them?Did you ever defrag $MFT? Did you ever "truncate" $MFT? Did you ever run network/TCPIP resetting?Does your Computer Device Manager show Yellow asterisked Device for Network?Do you have TCPIPv6 enabled?IF you could, post your Network and TCPIP setting:[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Network][HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip]{optional: Delete the TCPIP/DHCP network info such as 221.200.210.45 before posting}WHY? Some time there may be more than one network adapter. This affects how the Kernel processes each adapter, and then there is a conflict for setting/resetting registry. This may not only affect boot process, but also disk performance and the network performance since TCPIP and Network share common protocol as dependency requirements.CCleaner: http://download.piriform.com/ccsetup234.exeAutoruns: http://download.sysinternals.com/Files/Autoruns.zipProcess Explorer: http://download.sysinternals.com/Files/ProcessExplorer.zipPageDefrag: http://download.sysinternals.com/Files/PageDefrag.zipDefraggler: http://download.piriform.com/dfsetup121.exeBootvis: http://majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=664Follow 3-steps instructions from: http://social.answers.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/xpperformance/thread/14ade616-4f7e-4839-9c62-9025069e5b26

I HAVE ISOLATED THE PROBLEM AND AM NOW UP AND RUNNING!! Thank you so much for your help and info; which kept me going. By the way ABS won’t provide their “Lifetime telephone tech support” they promised when I bought this system from them for about $4000.00. They wouldn’t help me at all. They still sell some stuff but I hope nobody buys it! The problem is in the monitor, a digital Samsung 191T LCD, or the video board (256MB ATI Radeon 9800 XT). The computer was booting up all the time but I just couldn’t tell that it was. After trying tons of things that didn’t fix the problem --- but cleaned up my computer pretty well --- I unplugged the Samsung monitor from the digital connector and connected another monitor to the RGB connector on the board output and suddenly everything was working fine. I don’t have another digital monitor to test the card output to figure out which component is bad. This Gateway TFT LCD Monitor that I hooked up looks pretty darn good so I may just leave things as they are. Thanks again for your suggestions!

I HAVE ISOLATED THE PROBLEM AND AM NOW UP AND RUNNING!! Thank you so much for your help and info; which kept me going. By the way ABS won’t provide their “Lifetime telephone tech support” they promised when I bought this system from them for about $4000.00. They wouldn’t help me at all. They still sell some stuff but I hope nobody buys it! The problem is in the monitor, a digital Samsung 191T LCD, or the video board (256MB ATI Radeon 9800 XT). The computer was booting up all the time but I just couldn’t tell that it was. After trying tons of things that didn’t fix the problem --- but cleaned up my computer pretty well --- I unplugged the Samsung monitor from the digital connector and connected another monitor to the RGB connector on the board output and suddenly everything was working fine. I don’t have another digital monitor to test the card output to figure out which component is bad. This Gateway TFT LCD Monitor that I hooked up looks pretty darn good so I may just leave things as they are. Thanks again for your suggestions!Thanks for letting the community know.