Hi again :-) When I turn on my computer, running win98 2nd edition, with an AMD-K6 3D Processor, and 192 mb of RAM, sometimes my Desktop loads right away, but MOST of the time, it takes about 2 minutes for it to load my Desktop icons. Anyone know how I can speed this up? Every time I run Norton SystemWorks, it finds scads of errors, then I let it fix them, then the next day, there's always new problems. Any help with speeding up the loading of my Desktop would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Angi :-)

Hi, How many Icons do you have on the desktop? One of the mainreasons for slow startup / desktop loading is there is to many programs running at startup. Run MSCONFIG to check what is starting and cull out what is not necessary. Are you running an AntiVirus program with up to date defintion files? How long since you have 'Scandisked' and 'Defraged"? How many files in your C:\Windows\Temp and/or C:\Temp? How many Temporary Temporary Internet Files do you have in C:\Windows\Temporary Internet Files. Also how many Cookie files in C:\Windows\Cookies? Al these things combine to cause a slow startup and generally slow the system down overall. Remove excess files from the places noted and see how it goes then. DONT remove your Anti-Virus Prog, Explorer, Systray and other system tools when you use MSCONFIG. HTH

Is your anti virus (if you have it) scanning on start-up? This could cause slow start-up, especially if you have a large drive with many folders.

Seems also to depend on motherboard. I checked 2 PCs both equipped very similar to Angi's, one (ASUS Baby) starts much slower than a M590. I'm interested what happens during startup. How to get a protocol?