My Compaq Presario 3000 notebook computer is not nearly as fast as it once was. It is a Pentium 4, 2.4 with 60 gig hard drive running Windows XP Home. I've defragmented the disc several times, and that did not help.

When I first bought the computer it used to boot up extremely fast -- going from off to ready to work in about fifteen seconds. Now it takes up to five minutes or so before it will allow me to perform some functions. The boot process still seems fast judging by the screen, but even after the screen looks ready, the hard drive light keeps flashing for a long time. And I can't access most programs for five minutes or so. The computer seems to be busy doing something - I have no idea what it is doing.

The problem seemed to begin when I installed Norton firewall. Prior to that I had Norton Anti-Virus, and it worked fine. That version of Norton (2003 I think) did not have a firewall included. After installing a second CD with a separate Norton Firewall and some other Norton stuff on the CD, the problem started.

I uninstalled the Norton Firewall, but the slowness continued. Since then I've reinstalled a newer Norton version (2004) with an integrated firewall.

Any ideas how to fix this? I've also wondered how I can monitor what the computer hard drive is doing when this happens.

Do you have SP2?
When you uninstalled the Norton Firewall & Stuff did you manualy search for leftovers & or clean the registry?


also: look in your event viewer: rt. click My Computer then click Manage then Event Viewer.
open the system as well as the application and security tabs & look for X errors. click error line for details. post back the source & event id especially of errors that seem to coincide with startups.

I probably don't know how to do that. Can you tell me how, in a detailed fashion?

if you are refering to the search & clean; yes I can; do you have the CD for the latest Norton's you are using? i ask because it would probably be best to remove all Norton before reinstalling the package you want.

as to the SP2; if you have it you should not run that firewall along with norton.

but before doing anything I would be interested in what's in your event viewer.
do you understand those instructions? & can you post some idea of what you find?

Yes, I have the latest Norton CD (2004).

The event viewer has three items: Application, Security, and System logs, each with 512.0 k. I didn't look farther in there.

Double click on Application
Then Security
Then System

Look for red X errors

Look for a bunch that happened at the same time: a startup time.

I looked a little farther, although I don't know much about this.

Both the Application and Sytem folders have some errors listed.

Some of the System errors say that "The service can not be started . . ."

Some of the Application errors have to do with "Application Hang"

There does not seem to be a cluster of errors at startup time.

under application hang do you see an Event ID #

are they all the same #

what #'s

under system does it specify what service cannot be started?

if you click the error line you will get more details

Under Application, one of the last ten errors is Outlook.exe, ID 1002, Cat. 101. The other nine are all wpwin10.exe -- also ID 1002, Cat. 101. Both WordPerfect and Outlook haven't been working well for some time. Outlook usually works, but I've about given up on WordPerfect and gone to using Word.

Under System, the last error regarding not started is for %SAUSBHW.SvcDesc% service. I have no idea what that is. It also says "failed to start disabled or has no enabled devices associated with it"