Poor network and system performance until winlogon.exe crash

[xempest]

I don't quite understand what is going on in my XP Pro system, but I've put up with it for a decent amount of time now. For some unknown reason, I experience horribly sluggish (or none at all) network, as well as overall system performance - until winlogon.exe itself crashes. I open my task manager, and I see winlogon.exe rapidly increase in memory usage - almost 1000 K a second, and i've seen it well over 100000 K total. I haven't a clue as to what would be causing this, aside from some sort of malware - yet I've run numerous different spyware/adware detection and removal apps, such as AdAware and Spybot S&D. Nothing has worked, and I continue to experience the sluggish performance. When winlogon.exe DOES crash - I must drag the dialog box to the side of the screen (if I terminate winlogon the system will obviously hard crash) and disregard it - and then manually power off the system when I'm done with it.

One other unusual thing about this entire problem - it only occurs when I'm running the computer at one of my two residences. At my other residence, the computer will perform just fine.

What in the hell could be going on, and how can I fix it?

 

[fattony]

winlogon.exe memory leak eh...what's the deal with the two residences? are you logging on to a domain or just using your own local account? if you're connecting a campus network or whatever domains...could be a policy issue, could be a software being pushed down that's problematic

you have the latest windows updates on that compy?...might also be some login script or startup item/service dragging it down