Hi When I start my machine, it takes about 8min to start up....it sit's on the screen that says "Windows Is Starting..." for a long time. Then when my desktop finally shows up, my taskbar is gone....well I can see a thin little strip of it, but I can't move it or resize it...I went into the properties of it and it's all normal. Once I get to the desktop, it seems to run ok...I can run different programs and commands. I tried running chkdsk /f which didn't help. When I try to run things like msconfig, it tells me I'm not logged on as Admin, even tho I am. I took the hard drive out and put it in another machine (slave) and ran a few different virus scanners as well as spyware\adware scanners....all of them came up with nothing. I wondered if anybody has any ideas about what the problem might be here?? Thanks a bunch! Homer

... worth a butchers hook (look) http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/...

You can also try deleting everything in the \Windows\Prefetch folder but if it is an admin account and it says you aren't logged in as such, something else is going on like a bad profile. Logon as administrator and check the user profile your having problems with. Create a new user with admin rights(if it allows you to)and see if there is a difference there. Does it seem any slower when booting into safe mode? Did you uncheck lock taskbar when you tried to resize it? Did you have any viruses that got cleaned?

Pretty much anything, download ad-aware se, spybot and make sure you have a antivirus on your computer. Do a scan with ad-aware se, and also do a full system scan with a antivirus and see if it pops up with anything, how big is your harddrive? Jim R

HI Thanks for the suggestions. It takes a long time to load even when I go to safe mode...and the task bar problem is the same. I tried going to the User Accounts section, but it was all blank...I couldn't do anything there, cuz there was nothing in it. It didn't show any users or any options of any kind to make new user etc. I tried getting the contents of the prefetch folder...but didn't help. Taskbar is not locked or anything like that....all setting are normal. Thanks for the suggestions about the spyware programs etc....I did mention actually that I tried multiple virus programs and spyware\adware programs and they all came up clean. Thanks for all the suggestions!

you could try doing a repair install of vista. Jim R

HARDDRIVE: Possible that the harddrive is not running at its normal speed, freezing up or slowing down. My computer took 20 min. to boot the other day. I was watching the HDD activity indicator light, and it would remain on, and not rapidly blinking. Mechanical devices do have problems. Harddrive manufacturers have software for download for testing HDD.