Constant Active Desktop Recovery

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.general (More info?)

Perform the following maintenance:

Description of the Disk Cleanup Tool in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;310312&Product=winxp

How to Perform Disk Error Checking in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;315265&Product=winxp

HOW TO: Analyze and Defragment a Disk in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;305781&Product=winxp

Afterward, install the following:

User Profile Hive Cleanup Service
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyi...

What's User Profile Hive Cleanup Service (UPHClean)?
http://www.windowsitpro.com/Articles/Print.cfm?ArticleI...

--
Carey Frisch
Microsoft MVP
Windows XP - Shell/User
Microsoft Newsgroups

Get Windows XP Service Pack 2 with Advanced Security Technologies:
http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/protect/window...

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"stymied" wrote:

| Four or five months ago, our old home desktop PC began to have problems with
| the Active Desktop where upon bootup, it fairly consistently (about 1 out of
| 4 reboots, warm or cold) required the user to recover the active desktop.
| The machine has been running Home SP2. While this was irritating, it was
| easy enough to put up with.
|
| However, now the Active Desktop recovering has degraded to require recovery
| EVERY time the machine is rebooted, or booted from cold. This rebooting
| actually happens quite often, as there are AOL users on this machine and the
| machine has some sort of unrelated, long-standing (I think) glitch with the
| AOL software and trying to access the internet for web content, which can
| only be cleared up via a reboot.
|
| One thing I've noticed on this particular machine is that the shutdown
| process is taking an inordinately long period of time to complete,
| particularly during the part during the 'Saving Your Settings' splash screen
| (2-4 minutes). Given that there's not a lot of apps on this 'puter, and the
| thing is constantly checked for malware and viruses, it seems weird that it
| would take so long to save whatever setting the bloody thing needs to save.
| But it does 'appear' to complete whatever it needs to complete, as the
| machine has yet to hang up during any of the shutdowns and does go all the
| way to complete shutdown or a reboot. The only sign of any problem is the
| Active Desktop recovery on the subsequent bootup.
|
| Any advice on how I might "fix" this? TIA.