Windows Taking Longer To Boot Up

[TechDave]

Hi all!

Recently I reformatted my machine and Windows booted up and down fairly quickly (as to be expected because there was hardly anything installed on it). Then, I started noticing that it took longer and longer if I did a reboot for Windows to come all the way back to desktop. I also noticed that my e-mail program (Incredimail) was taking longer to open up as well. All signs pointed to either a virus or spyware. I updated my virus def's in Norton and ran a scan. It showed nothing. Then I ran a scan with Windows Defender and it showed nothing. Then I ran Ad-Aware Personal (after getting new def's) and it found several "Tracking Cookies" and 3 or 4 programs (Comet something or other) and listed them all as spyware. So I deleted what it found (machine froze....locked up solid) and I had to reboot. Ran Ad-Aware again and it found 2 more items (Comet) and I deleted those. I rebooted again adn Windows was still taking a long time (2 minutes or a little more) to completely reboot back to desktop. I ran Spysweeper and it found 2-3 cookies which I deleted also....and then tried yet another reboot.

To make a long story short (too late by now I know), I seem to have gotten rid of the spyware (at least what was found on my scans) but Windows still is taking waaaaaaayyyy too long to reboot. I don't have that much on the machine and before all this happened, it was rebooting (from the time everything shut down til it reached desktop) in like 30-45 seconds. Nowit's longer.....like 2-3 minutes. Also, when it's rebooting and just after I see the Windows XP loading screen, the screen goes black and stays like that for 20-25 seconds (never did this before) and then rolls over to the Welcome screen.

What I'm afraid of is that the spyware I removed may have written something into or in affect altered my boot.ini file or some of the other files that Windows goes through during boot-up. I download HiJack This! just in case someone here asked me to run it and send (or post) the report for them to look through. Is this what I should do?

Please advise me on what I should be looking for or what I should do to get Windows back to booting up correctly (i.e. not taking forever and a day!).

System Specs:
Athlon XP 2400+ CPU (2.0GHz)
1 BG DDR Ram
80 GB (Crive)
160 GB (Drive)
A-Open AK77-8XN Motherboard
Windows XP Home (with SP 2 installed)

Thanks in advance for any replies and any help!! As always......you people are the greatest!!! BTW.......I got Incredimail back to starting up normally and not taking about 20-25 seconds to open!

TechDave

[dudeking]

Hi first do a scan with Bit defender http://www.bitdefender.com/scan8/ie.html
Post the log back here.
Next we need to see whats running at start up.
In the run command type msconfig.
On the startup tab post every thing that is on there.
Now go to the download section of this site and download hijack this.
Install/Unzip it to your C:\ drive and run the program.
We dont want to remove any thing just yet so click scan and save a log file.
Save the log and post in on here.
A hijack helper will look at it for you and advise you on what to do next.

Really this should be in the cyber safty forum so it may get moved.

[TechDave]

Ok DudeKing, I am making a new thread over in Cyber Safety and I'll refer to this thread. Please check out my results from scans in the new thread and offer any assistance you can.

Thanks!!

TechDave

[dudeking]

Ill have a look but only mods and hijack helpers are alowed to offer advice on hijack logs.