I got a weird problem. I have a system that hangs for about 20 seconds between POST and the WinXP boot screen. After that, the system boots up in about 15 seconds. However, the Connect To menu in the Start Menu doesn't load up for about 5 minutes after everything is loaded. Everything else is usable, and it runs fast, despite that single hang-up. This is a system that was just freshly installed. I haven't installed any programs, but I configured a PPPoE connection for DSL, no firewall.
Brief System Specs:
- Athlon XP 1700+
- can't recall the mobo, but has onboard sound, NIC, USB, AGP 4X, VIA chipset, AMI BIOS based
- 512 MB PC2100 - one generic 256 MB stick, one Kingston 256 MB stick (both have been tested in every single slot configuration possible, and each configuration seems to work fine)
- nVidia TNT2 32 MB AGP
- Windows XP Home, pre-SP1
Another small problem - when the internet is running, everything is fine, Internet Explorer goes off without a hitch. However, when running something like Activate Windows or Windows Update, they can't seem to detect the PPPoE connection. Do these programs use UDP packets?
The problem may be partly due to the network configuration, and I even disabled File and Printer Sharing, but to no avail. I have no idea what might cause the boot screen delay either. I'm really stuck on this. Any ideas? Anybody?
