I'm running Win98 on a Dell Dimension 550. Boot-ups have been taking a long time recently (>1 min), so I ran Boot Log Analyzer to see what the story is. One file in particular, IFSHLP.SYS, is taking nearly 16 seconds to load, yet it is only about 3K in size. It's located in c:\windows, so isn't hard to find. Anybody got a clue why this is happening? TIA, Bob

Yep I've got this problem as well except it takes 20 seconds to load. Im running Win98 on a PII 266 with 160MB Ram.

it isn't the finding, or loading of this file taking the time, but the the job it is trying to do. one of which is to report on the status of any network drives. right-click on net nhood, check the type of login you are using. if you have selected to verify connections to network drives before you use them , then deselect and see if that makes a difference. also check your profile, have you any big files on your desktop? better to create shortcuts to them if so as these things are fully loaded before you get hands on to your pc.

Me three. W98/450mhz/128meg. Also used Boot Log Analyzer because of loong loads; 16+ seconds. No; not booting to network or network drives, and no files on desktop...just shortcuts to folders.

In reference to IFSHLP.SYS file being called upon at bootup, and taking forever to complete... What I would like to know is... why this file is even being referenced at all? Do I even NEED it? 1: I don't have a network, or network drives. 2: I use TCP/IP to connect to the net exclusively. Methinks perhaps I have at some point loaded or installed something that required it. IE: One installer automatically installed AOL crap, and in so doing, AOL just so happened to require the Network Neighborhood. Prior to the install, I never had that on my desktop at all! NICE! Can I simply get rid of it from whatever is calling it (Config.sys or whatever startup file is doing the deed)? Many thanks, Mike

You definitely do need this file. It tells windows how to read the file allocation of your hard disk. It is native to windows, and without it the whole thing goes belly up.