blank screen for 3-5 mins after i typed password on the VGN-FE41Z

[dazwan]

hi,
basically when i boot up my laptop after a good while i end up in the password section
press enter
nothing special.
after that. i enter the vista *welcome* screen and then after that the whole laptop is just idle, no hard-drive spinning and a slow quiet fan sound and i enter a *screen of darkness* where i can only see the mouse.
The empty blank screen stays there and the machine stays idle for about 1-2mins and then the desktop appears and then it *starts to load* ( now 3-5 mins) blank screen time
please help me! it is getting very iritating please help me, sorry for the repost

thanks in advance

[dazwan]

Don't really know what to suggest.  

Try turning off your Firewall/Virus Checker - it may be configured to scan all programs before they can be loaded. Also make sure a scan is not scheduled on each boot.

Also have a look in Task Scheduler to make sure you don't have a Scheduled Task set to run each time you startup - this can cause this type of problem.

Just out of interest, have you tried booting into Safe Mode to see if that takes as long?  If it is quicker, you can narrow down the possible causes a bit.

 

it sometimes says "personalised settings" not responding, and the problem happened AFTER i stopped some programs running at startup, then i set them back to default and they messed up

[IntuitiveNipple]

You can infer alot from analysing the System, Application, and Security event logs.

Next time you boot keep a close eye on the exact time, to the second, and make notes of when various stages of the log-in process occur (make sure you've synchronised your time with the PC first!).

Now, when it finally loads, go into the event logs and look for events with timestamps just prior to where the log-in seems to hang. You'll need to flick back and forth between the three log categories to build up a complete picture.

From that analysis you should be able to see what devices/actions are occurring leading up to the delay, and also what kicks off when the activity of the PC gets going again.

With that information you should be able to point to one or more potential causes of the problem.

Off the top of my head it sounds like a DNS name-resolution issue. When logging in to Windows (depending on if you're part of a Workgroup or Active Directory domain) it will query the network for various settings. If the PC is expecting to do that but can't resolve a network name, or can't resolve it's own name it is likely to cause delays in multiples of 45 seconds (the default timeout period), usually at least 3 per each event that is querying the network.