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My work laptop (which I have admin access on) freezes fairly frequently upon boot. I get to the point where I am logged in (type my Windows user name and password) and looking at the blue background...and...it just hangs.

I have tried looking at the event viewer, but there are so many errors and warnings, I'm not even sure I'm looking at the right thing. Any suggestions for figuring out what is going wrong?

(With all this said, there is a ton of crap installed on this PC due to corporate policies, etc. It may very well be an update to an application. If I can confirm that it is a specific application, that would be huge.)

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This often occurs due to a network/domain issue. Are you logging in to a domain? If so, try logging in to the local machine as the local administrator. If everything boots up quickly, then the problem lies on the network and we can go from there.

A better explanation is that XP isn't very smart with networking. When you log in to your domain, XP tries to make all of those connections to your domain while it is logging in, and waits a very long time before timing out to let you continue to log in.

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  • @th3dude - I am logging into a domain (my work domain). However, this problem also seems to happen when I'm disconnected from the network (AKA, if I take the laptop home and boot it up there, then connect with VPN).
    – JasCav
    Jan 19, 2011 at 20:18
  • @JasCav If you boot it up and don't log in as the local administrator, it will still hang for a while trying to get a network connection until it times out. You should try booting into safe mode without networking. If it doesn't hang you know your issue.
    – Corv1nus
    Jan 19, 2011 at 20:22
  • Yep, just like Corv1nus says, logging into your VPN remotely is still trying to connect through your domain. Either do as he says and boot safe mode without networking, or at login, select your local machine as the domain rather than your domain and log in using your local administrator credentials.
    – th3dude
    Jan 19, 2011 at 20:34
  • @Corv1nus @th3dude - Thank you both. If this is indeed the problem (I have to wait to test it since I am running a batch job right now), is there any way I can decrease the timeout or fix the problem?
    – JasCav
    Jan 19, 2011 at 20:41
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    Also, when you get logged in, click 'Start' then 'Run' and type 'msconfig'. This will bring up a window that shows you everything of yours that starts on startup (in the startup tab) and everything that starts as a service (in the services tab). You may be able to clean that up a bit too.
    – th3dude
    Jan 24, 2011 at 15:43
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If you would like to attempt to troubleshoot it, I would open msconfig by going to run and typing msconfig. At the General tab there should be an option for diagnostic startup. Try booting like this and see if the issue persists. If it does, then if could be a network or domain issue. If it doesn't persist, I would enable certain things at a time until you discover which program is giving you issues. You could then show your results to your company IT or someone of that sort to prove the issue.

-Good Luck

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