ten second pause

After the Windows XP desktop has loaded and the avast (v4.6 Home) icon starts spinning in the task bar, I’m able to use stuff from the desktop almost immediately. The avast icon stops spinning, everything’s fine but then, after a few seconds, the avast icon starts spinning again - there’s hard disk activity - and the desktop freezes for about 10 seconds. During this time I can move the cursor but nothing works. Not a disaster but annoying. It’s only started to happen recently.

I’ve undone any major changes I’ve done recently and uninstalled anything recent I thought might be causing the problem - like Microsoft Anti-Spyware :wink: I also checked out the event viewer but nothing untoward is stated. I also reinstalled my DSL driver (which caused NAV to load slowly at bootup in the past) and my graphics card drivers. But it persists. The system runs fine after this pause at startup.

One thing I have noticed - no idea if it’s relevant and, again, it doesn’t affect the system in any way - is an occasional error message just as Windows closes down. It’s not up long enough to read more than: “cannot read to memory” or similar.

Any help gratefully received.

A well-discussed topic here… You can search the board a little…
Anyway, try Startup Delayer.
It’s the only freeware I’ve found that controls the windows startup (Windows 98\Me\2k\XP) that does not follow a strict order.

You can set some applications to start very after the boot (logon) itself. :wink:

Welcome to avast forums 8)

Thanks for the swift reply. I did do a search (or 3) before writing but could find nothing… At present I’m wading my way through the different threads. I have found that the ashdisp.exe… cannot be read to memory error has been talked about a lot! But the pause after bootup?

avast is scanning the startup items. After Windows SP2 the startup and shutdown processes receive more attention and security. This will be normal.
Try to disable some items of your startup list. The program Startup Delayer could help you on scheduling the startup.

I have the same problem, but not in the 10 seconds range: more in the 60 seconds range or even more… but not each time I reboot !

Any idea ?