Windows XP hangs on Applying Your Personal Settings

Question

I have a laptop which is not associated with a domain (it's on the default "WORKGROUP"). When I log in, the computer hangs on "Applying your personal settings" for a very long time. Do you have any idea what I can do to fix this?

Solution 1

Have seen this in a couple of different cases.

System has a wireless and wired connection. Turning off wireless connection and assuring wired connection was properly configured resolved the issue. Never found satisfactory explanation but it worked.

Have you logged on as a different user? Same issue? If so, possibly a profile issue.

What happens if you log on in safe mode?

Solution 2

I've had this happen three different times.

One is the same answer as above, the wireless connector was trying to make a link to somewhere, and it just seemed to take forever. Turned the WL off, and it booted up pronto from then on.

Another was a wonky anti-virus update, Trend Micro, it was reported by a lot of Trend users, we weren't the only ones. Once we upgraded the Trend engine, the problem went away.

The third was using roaming profiles, a user up in Cairns (Queensland Australia), had take heaps of screen shots, using .BMP's. Created a couple hundred meg of desktop. The formula goes, 256k link + 200Meg Desktop + Roaming Profile = 10 minutes boot time.

I'm sure there's other ways it can be created. These are just the three I ran into.

Comments

[Jaime Garcia]

There are no errors on the Event Log

[Jaime Garcia]

It's not on a domain, it's just on a workgroup (which is the default for Windows XP). The laptop is not part of a network.

[Jaime Garcia]

Login on in safe mode is fast. Login in as a different user caused the same issue

[Dave M]

Try running msconfig and disable all startup items and try again. If that helps, work through list adding items one at time. It will take some time but may point to problem area

[Jaime Garcia]

Will try this and let you know.