Blue Wallpaper on boot up - nothing more

[IBMorBust]

Hey all.

When I boot up my T42 1.6 Dothan (768MB RAM), maybe one in every ten or 12 times, I only get blue XP wallpaper - no icons, no tray, no start tab.

I can still move my cursor, but CNTRL ALT DEL doesn't even shut my system down.

I have to manually hold the power button to power down. After rebooting, everything is normal.

Should I reinstall XP?

[Marc_G]

My thoughts:

Step 1: Full virus scan / Ad-Aware / Spybot etc.
Step 2: On a successful boot, review what processes are running and trim out anythat don't add materially to how you typically use the computer.
Step 3: Make sure you are up to date on Windows updates and IBM drivers.
Step 4: Run BootVis and optimize your bootup sequence.
Step 5: If you are still seeing the problem, start removing applications and services to see if there is a correlation.
Step 6: Check for faulty HD or RAM.
Step 7: Now, re-install.

Once you get to a reliably-working state, I recommend burning an image using Ghost or other utility of choice, to make getting back to this point easy in the future.

Marc

[IBMorBust]

Thanks Marc. Will give it a shot as you described in detail.

I appreciate you taking the time to do that very much.