Hi all. Has anyone got any ideas about this little ‘doozie’ of a problem? I’ve read about others who have issues with boot times and the ‘black screen’ syndrome but I don’t feel this is either of those. Bear with me on this. It began about two days ago and since then I’ve removed (using aswclear) and reinstalled Avast four times - all with the same result. The problem creeps back after a few computer restarts.
Here’s the general idea:
Normally, the PC will boot to the “Windows XP” screen (the one with the ‘Knight-rider’ type bar that flashes across and within a few moments it goes to the “Welcome” screen before loading the desktop. Whole process takes approx 45-60 seconds max.
Now, after reinstalling Avast, it behaves normally for one or two reboots and then develops the following ‘pause’ in boot time. It happens between the ‘Knight-rider’ screen and the “Welcome” screen. The screen just goes black with an active mouse cursor on screen - however, nothing happens for about 5-6 mins. No disk activity at all. Then, just like nothing is wrong, it pops up the “Welcome” screen and proceeds to the desktop.
The only thing that has changed to my system in the last couple of days is a Java update. I don’t think this is the problem though, as I have since then uninstalled Java completely and reinstalled Avast and the issue persists.
For information purposes:
OS - Windows XP Professional SP3
Antivirus - Avast 8.0.1483
Firewall - Comodo 6.1
I hope someone can shed some light on this for me. It’s not catastrophic by any means but it IS annoying and I hate mystery problems!
It could be the same problem. The other people with the black screen and cursor might not be waiting as long as you did. If they waited about ten minutes, their computer could boot to the welcome screen. Then they could work to solve the problem.
I’m sorry I can’t shed any light on it for you, but there are some very intelligent people on this forum, and they are having a hard time with it.
I’m trying to keep up with several problems like yours, because I hate mystery problems too.
Black screen syndrome affect Vista and Win8 the most, and some win7.
Some kind of black screen or slow boot for XP is related to some corrupted in Nvidia driver
Do you have Nvidia drivers ? Have you updated it lately ?
Also I see that you just updated to Comodo 6.1. There has been some trouble reported here and Comodo forums with CIS 6, Avast!, and Win XP. Myself never could run CIS 6.0 in my XP. Slow boot, high CPU and RAM so I had to go back to v.5. I may try v.6.1 this week though.
Thanks for the replies, guys. Most appreciated. And thanks for the welcome iroc9555.
In answer to your question: No. No Nvidia drivers here. I’m on Ati Radeon. It is most strange as whilst it is in ‘pause’ mode (as I have named it - hehe!) you would expect to see some HDD activity. Something to say it’s DOING something whilst waiting. Almost as if it’s trying or wanting to do some sort of ‘scan’ before loading the desktop. That’s why I suspected it to be an Avast issue. I don’t know.
I guess I’ll just bide my time and maybe a future update will resolve the issue. It seems like plenty of people are suffering the same kind of symptoms so some bright spark somewhere will; I’m sure; be working on a resolution. Whether it be Avast or Comodo, we will see.