Windows XP forum: Slow load after reaching desktop

hello your system clean of spyware?

Check out "Spybot" on the Web. It's a free download and works great to clean out all that spyware.

How many items do you have opened on the systray, and background apps running?

I have a Dell 8250, 2.4 ghz, 1 year old, 30g HD, 512 mb memory, running XP Pro. The machine has all the latest patches.

The Computer comes up and the desktop appears, two icon are present in the sys tray and at this point it slows down approximately 2-4 minutes later all the rest of the icons will pop up. The icons are musicmatch, messenger, zone alarm, norton and the network connection icon. The first two icon I spoke about are the weather bug and microsoft activesyn for my PDA.

This only happens after the desktop is up and notto any other programs.

I use SBC DSL for my internet connection.

The only thing that I can remember is loading gimp, which is a program for photo enhancement.

Windows or some programs running in the background seems to be loading something during the 2-4 minutes 'delay'. I would play the 'eliminating and testing' 'game':

Run msconfig from 'Start'
Go to the 'Startup' tab and then 'Services' tab.
Go down the list to see whether any item is
reconized--e.g. that photo editing program you
mentioned.
Uncheck a suspecious item in turn, shutting down and
rebooting to see whether there is any improvment-go
back to msconfig recheck that item and then uncheck
another item, shut down, reboot....and so on...until
you find the offending item. Then keep it unchecked.

Have a pot of coffee ready--It will be time comsuming.
Best of luck.