HELP - Window XP freezing on start-up

[immortality]

as the title says, my PC freezes when it boots. it boots to the windows screen, loads the icons etc but you can't do anything, nothing work. if oyu move the mouse over the lower blue bar the pointer turns to a hour glass. if left the screen saver comes on but nothing works still.

you can use CTRL - ALT - Delete keys to get the Widnows task manager up. once oyu have this i go to the Processes list and end the explorer.exe fuction from the list. this kills all the icons. then if i use the "File" -> "new task" <run> fuction and reboot explorer.exe everything works fine.

any help appreciated

[Not_An_Abba_Fan]

Download SuperAnti Spyware and run it in safe mode. Explorer.exe is a common process used by a lot of adware and viruses.

[immortality]

cheers mate, scanned with SuperAnti Spyware, nothing. also scanned with McAfee anti virus. also nothing. i don't think it's a virus etc. the PC has been slow for some time now, sometimes it didn't boot properly and was very slow, when you shut down it came up with a shutdown error, it's always explorer.exe. you can shoose to close it immediatly and loose any usaved data etc. the problem always seems worse after installing new software. the last item i installed was software and driver for a new epson printer.

i'm guessing it may be some sort off software conflict or registry error, however i don't know enough about software to fix it

[Rufus®]

Where does your ram and cpu usage sit when this happens? when was the last time you formatted and did a clean install?

[immortality]

ram sits from about 180-320MB, CPU usage moves around a bit but eventually settles at about 1-2% ram settles at 180MB. last time i did a complete format and clean install was a few years ago. was hoping to avoid that. too much bloody work

[Not_An_Abba_Fan]

The other option is to do a disc clean up, empty your temp folders and do a defrag. Also uninstall drivers and reinstall the new version rather than just updating them.

[immortality]

this is ****ed up. my youngest boy installed a game yesterday and thismorning he was playing on the PC. i hadn't fixd anything...... anyways it boots fine this time and now there is a epson printer icon in the toolbar by the clock. PC still running slow. it's not that long ago that i defragged and clean temp files etc

[Rufus®]

easiest way around it would be to backup everything you want to keep, and format!

[holdensupporter2005]

Download Hijackthis and run a scan. Save the Log file and email it to me at callatech@internode.on.net I will have a look at it and see if we can sort it out.
Also download Windows Cleanup and run it on the PC. It will clean heaps of junk off.

[immortality]

thanks for the help mate. will try what you suggested