I apoligize if this is not the correct group for this post.

My XP SP2 computer had been starting very slowly for well over a year now. I
had always thought it was because of a lack of RAM (only had 256mb). I
recently added another 512mb for a total of 768. However startup is just as
slow so I figured it must be something else.

I narrowed it down to the DCOM service. If I set it to manual computer
starts fine but McAfee antivirus won't start and MS Word will run but with
error messages. I'm sure there is other issues but those are the only two
I've seen so far. If I reset DCOM service back to automatic everything works
but with the really slow startup.

What's happening is the XP logon screen will appear in a timely fashion but
when I click on my username it take about 30 seconds for my wallpaper to
appear and about a minute + for my icons to appear on my desktop.

I guess I need this service but is there some way I can speed this up? Could
the service have become corrupted or something? I understand this service
came with service pack 2. Can I reinstall it?

Thanks
Scott

After posting my message I did some searching on these newsgroups and found a
post by Sharon F who had some suggestions for another user with a similar
problem.

One of her suggestions was to disable the Windows Image Acquisition service.
I checked in Event Viewer and sure enough that was getting hung up. I
disabled the service and my slow start up went away.

So Thanks Sharon F wherever you are.

Scott

"Sc0rre" wrote:

> I apoligize if this is not the correct group for this post.
>
> My XP SP2 computer had been starting very slowly for well over a year now. I
> had always thought it was because of a lack of RAM (only had 256mb). I
> recently added another 512mb for a total of 768. However startup is just as
> slow so I figured it must be something else.
>
> I narrowed it down to the DCOM service. If I set it to manual computer
> starts fine but McAfee antivirus won't start and MS Word will run but with
> error messages. I'm sure there is other issues but those are the only two
> I've seen so far. If I reset DCOM service back to automatic everything works
> but with the really slow startup.
>
> What's happening is the XP logon screen will appear in a timely fashion but
> when I click on my username it take about 30 seconds for my wallpaper to
> appear and about a minute + for my icons to appear on my desktop.
>
> I guess I need this service but is there some way I can speed this up? Could
> the service have become corrupted or something? I understand this service
> came with service pack 2. Can I reinstall it?
>
> Thanks
> Scott