Another Techie question

[musiclawyer]

My computer boots up ok at first. All the big desktop icons show up, But the little icons on the bottom taskbar do not show up at all. Usually they appear at first from right to left on the bottom right of the screen.... When this happens I cannot access any programs, access the internet or even get the help menue to respond. It's like you click the mouse but nothing happens. It happened last week and I just restarted the computer and all was fine, but this week, it's just stuck and even when I re-start, the problem remains. Any ideas or troubleshooting techniques to share. Thank you.

[LisaLynne]

1. What OS?

I'm assuming ... Windows XP? Those little icons represent programs starting up. Do you run Anti-virus software (Norton or McAfee)? Have you installed anything recently? It might be a problem with one of those programs.

What you can do is start up the computer and hit the F8 key before you see the Windows Splash screen. This can be tricky in XP because it all happens so quickly. Then, you should be able to boot into Safe Mode. In Safe Mode, a lot of these programs are not started. You can uninstall them if you have the software to reinstall them, then reboot and see if it helps. You can also remove things in the Startup folder, so they don't start up automatically. They won't all be in there, because some of them like to be sneaky!

[demnan]

2. I'll bet it's your virusscan

sometimes they update those things and they hang when starting up. To check that you could go to Services and make loading that program manual and stop the program and see if it boots up after that.

However, don't leave the antivirus like that, you really need it! Just go and download the latest update and that should probably fix it.

[musiclawyer]

3. Thanks.

Yes I have XP and I'll try that. I have PCcillin and it's always asking me to update(every week at least once) . And I do, figuring that's it's an important update.