Suddently takes 3 tries and 10 minutes to start-up winXP

J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:
In message , Micky
writes:
On Sat, 6 May 2017 11:57:06 +0100, "J. P. Gilliver (John)"
wrote:

In message , Micky
writes:
[]
Meanwhile, it has occurred to me that just before I started haiving
this startup problem, when shutting down the previous night, it
installed 6 XP updates. Is there any chance one of them has slowed
startup, and is there a place where the Uninstall files for them is
located?

I take it you either have applied the POS hack, or hadn't used it for a

Right.

_very_ long time! Even with the POS hack, my latest seems to contain
files dated 2016-6-17, and is (you'll almost certainly have to (Tools,
Folder Options, View) change Hidden files and folders to Show to see
these folders) C:\Windows\$NtUninstallKB3164035$ (one of _many_
$NtUninstall...$ folders there); it has what looks like an uninstall
.exe in a subfolder (as do most of the few I just looked at). But
[]
But I still didn't wait. There was only one directory for the
appriate date like the one you have above. It had a txt file which
didon't contain anything valuable. And it had spuninst.exe, which I
figured would uninstall the right one (since every folder had that
same exe file)

Aye, the ones I looked at had a file called that. (I'm guessing it means
"service pack uninstall", even though they weren't service packs in the
same sense as SP1, 2, and 3. Unless someone knows otherwise.)

So I ran it and it had about 8 steps.
Assessing the situation, and it told me that the update had affected
net framework 4 and ie8. I installed NF4 for a program that it turned
out wouldn't run on XP anyhow, but uninstalls scare me so I left it, I
almost never use ie8. While FF and SMonkey have gotten better, IE8
stays an 8.
Checking for space
Closing services
Something about catalogs
Doing pre-uninstall stuff.

The first 4 ran almost instantaneously, the last took a few seconds.
Then it uninstalled and it also
Did post-uninstall stuff
Revised the registry
Something about catalogs.
Started services.

I've forgottent 1 step at most, but maybe none.

Thanks for doing the experiment and giving that description.

And it seems to have worked. Windows closed and reopened in 4
minutes. And last night I hibernated and it woke from that fine.

Glad it seems to have sorted things for you!

Even though I took the advice and cancelled the splash screen, I
didn't see any more. Either starting or coming out of hibernation ??

I wonder if it will offer to install the same update(s) again? LIke
an idiot, I didn't write down its number, even though I know it might
delete the relevant files. Which it did.

Fortunately I was smart enough to look in windows.log , which only
goes back a month, and had nothing about uninstalling today. That
really surprises me. But it does have about the install on 5/3, and

It disappoints me, but it doesn't surprise me (-:.

it says:

01:47:35:062+0300 1 193 102
{00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000} 0 0
AutomaticUpdates Success Content Install Restart Required: To
complete the installation of the following updates, the computer must
be restarted. Until this computer has been restarted, Windows cannot
search for or download new updates: - Security Update for WES09 and
POSReady 2009 (KB4015383) - April, 2017 Security and Quality Rollup
for .NET Framework 4 on WES09 and POSReady 2009 (KB4014570) -
Cumulative Security Update for Internet Explorer 8 for WES09 and
POSReady 2009 (KB4014661) - Security Update for Microsoft .NET
Framework 4 for WEPOS and POSReady 2009 (KB3135993) - Security Update
for Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0 SP2 on Windows Server 2003 and
Windows XP x86 (KB2756918) - April, 2017 Security and Quality Rollup
for .NET Framework 2.0 SP2 on WES09 and POSReady 2009 (KB4014580)

So it looks like I uninstalled 6 different updates. That's the number
I thought there were that night, but it would be nice to be able to
uninstall one at a time. When in the first step it gave me a list
of 3 programs that would be affected, it only gave Accept or Cancel as
choices.

Useful to know it does that - says what will be affected and gives you
the option to cancel. (Though unfortunately we don't know if all the
spuninst.exes will do that. Anyone else know?)

"Until this computer has been restarted, Windows cannot search for or
download new updates: " That seemed to be the case but this is the
first time I've seen it in print. It seems to be part of the message
sent when system downloads are offered, but I've never seen this line.
Have you?

No, but (AFAICR) I've never actually run one of these spuninst.exe
files, and I'm not sure whether I've ever looked in/at windows.log
either. (In fact - I've got Everything.exe open at the moment - I may
not have such a file; Everything's certainly not seeing one, but it may
need extra permissions or something to see it. Where's yours?)


On WinXP, in C:\WINDOWS, I see some KB*******.log files.

The dates on those, should give you some idea when a particular
Windows update item was added.

And as for running the POS Hack, I don't think I've leave such
a hack running in "Automatic Update" mode. That would be strictly
manual, with me reviewing entries and deciding which ones
were appropriate.

*******

If I do a search on "ngen" here on WinXP, I get

C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v1.1.4322
v2.0.50727
v4.0.30319

I suspect versions of .NET above 4.0 are used as
a barrier, so 4.5 or 4.6 or whatever, could not
be added.

The 2.0.50727 covers 2.0, 3.0. 3.5 layers of the stack.
That's why there are no separate entries for 3.0 and 3.5.

You can check your dotNET with Aaron Stebners tools.

netfx_setupverifier_new.zip

My WinXP has .NET up to 4.0, apparently. This is the
highest version in the menu.

https://s9.postimg.org/lzee3gz7z/net...rifier_exe.gif

Paul

On Fri, 05 May 2017 20:11:30 -0700, mike wrote:

On 5/5/2017 3:06 AM, Micky wrote:
A winXP question, but a serious one, so I'm asking for help from
v10-hotshots too.

My Acer Netbook (about 8 to 10 years old, model not remembered but on
request) has been working fine, except for the usual Firefox too many
tabs problem. This time I closed Windows normally and the next time I
tried to boot it, 10 or 15 minutes went by and nothing showed on the
screen. Nothing on the screen when I started, in the middle, or when
I got tired and turned the computer off.

Turned it off with the power button, and on restart, it did nothing
again, for 10 or 15 minutes. Much of the time the harddrive light was
on steadily. Sometimes it flickered and then went back to steady.

On the third try it started, but took much longer than normal, and it
displayed nothing along the way until the very end it displayed a blue
screen with a couple horizontal bars and Windows is Starting.

It's hard to believe but at the start it didn't even display the
startup options to go into the BIOS, etc.

But everything worked fine once it did start. After 8 hours of use,
the web browser (SeaMonkey) was slowing down, so I restarted it.

Same problems. Finally started on 3rd try, but took 10 minute to do
so. Working fine again.

What is the problem? What to do? I'm on vacation and if the whole
thing fails, I don't have equipment to "fix it" or even salvage data
from the HDD.)

Thanks for any help you can offer.


It's worth the effort to check the CPU fan.
A large percentage of slowdown or boot problems I've
encountered have been due to a CPU heatsink full of cat hair.

Will do.

In microsoft.public.windowsxp.general, on Fri, 5 May 2017 23:41:26
+0100, "J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote:

In message , Micky
writes:
[]
That leaves the bookmarks and url history, and I knew how to back up
Firefox, and I brought with me the bat file that copies them to
another drive, but I don't know the file names for Sea Monkey, that
I'm using now and which works a lot better in XP on a netbook that has
only 1gig RAM.
[]
Not that it is any reason not to be concerned about the HD and other
hardware, but can you easily double the RAM? When I bought this netbook

I don't know where I got the idea I coudn't do that, but it turns out a
2gig stick is only $10. I bought one and it was waiting for me when I
got home, but it doesn't work. The vendor said he'd send me another,
Samsung this time, and while at first he wanted me to send the first one
back, he seems to be wavering on that.

I think that's because he's convinced I know what I'm doing and that
I'm not lying. That's because he wanted me to rub the gold fingers
with a rubber (eraser) before giving up, and I wrote that I'd read that
was bad for contacts and I was going to use ??? Contact Cleaner first,
if that didn't work De-OxIT, and if that didnt' work, I'd use the
eraser. None of it worked -- the computer never gets past a black
screen with white clouds -- so I should write him tonight. I don't
think he sent me his shipping address yet.

(The first ebay email he sent was in broken English and a part was hard
to understand, but the second one said the same thing in better English.
While this is an inconvenience, I find the whole thing interesting, and
at worst I'll waste $10.)


IIUC it's $3 to China for an envelope under 1 oz. (or something like
that), if it fits.


(towards the end of the XP era), it also came with only 1G, and (having
heard it was advisable) I bought a 2G stick at the same time. It was
some months before I got round to fitting it, and it seemed to make
little or no difference - but then Task Manager showed I was rarely
getting anywhere near 1G. As time has passed, usage _has_ gone up -
browsers being the main culprit, and I now _do_ exceed 1G a lot of the
time (have even passed the 2 very occasionally of late).

In microsoft.public.windowsxp.general, on Fri, 5 May 2017 14:38:04
-0400, Wolf K wrote:



Most likely the hardware is failing. I hope you have backup of your data.=


The symptoms you describe suggest failing chips on the mobo, possibly=20
the HDD too, possibly other components. I don't think it's the CMOS=20
battery, which would be the simplest fix (but not the easiest, IIRC,=20
it's underneath the mobo on laptops.)

IMO, an 8-10 year old machine that shows these symptoms should be given=20
a decent burial.

But it loves me. ;-( And who will take care of it? And it's
onlyi 6 years old after all. (I may buy a newer one anyhow. What's
love anyhow?)

Extract the HDD first, and hope it's in good enough=20
shape to copy the data off it.

Good luck,

As you may have read, it turned out to be one of the security updates,
I'm surprised at that too, and I'm trying hard not to reinstall the same
update after seeing that list of 12 possible updates in a later XP
thread.

On Fri, 16 Jun 2017 20:54:39 -0400, micky
wrote:

In microsoft.public.windowsxp.general, on Fri, 5 May 2017 23:41:26
+0100, "J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote:

In message , Micky
writes:
[]
That leaves the bookmarks and url history, and I knew how to back up
Firefox, and I brought with me the bat file that copies them to
another drive, but I don't know the file names for Sea Monkey, that
I'm using now and which works a lot better in XP on a netbook that has
only 1gig RAM.
[]
Not that it is any reason not to be concerned about the HD and other
hardware, but can you easily double the RAM? When I bought this netbook

I don't know where I got the idea I coudn't do that, but it turns out a
2gig stick is only $10.

I was going to double the RAM in my Dell Inspiron but was put off
by the price. $80 for one 4 GB stick from Ebay.
If I could get one for $20 I would do it.