Windows boot-up loading/timing error?

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[Nibbled To Death By Ducks]

I’m sure we all know that Windows has had startup/program loading and timing issues for ages, but this one takes the cake for me. Symptoms:

On first boot of the day, 80% of the time the icons in the right hand section of the toolbar do not fully populate, and I have to do a reboot. Then everything is fine after that, all looks right.

I have searched for temp files hiding somewhere, “customized” the toolbar with the desired icons having slightly different behaviors, and checked the box “show icons and notifications”, all to no avail.

I have installed no new software in months, just updated Firefox.

I thought the registry might be corrupted, but that’s brain surgery, and I am reluctant to go there, tho I have in the past.
Any ideas? In the words of William S. Burroughs,

“It’s driving me crazy, it’s driving me nuts.”

Win7 Pro SP1 64-bit, Dell Latitude E6330 ("The Tank"), Intel CORE i5 "Ivy Bridge", 12GB RAM, Group "0Patch", Multiple Air-Gapped backup drives in different locations. Linux Mint Newbie
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"The more kinks you put in the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the pipes." -Scotty

• This topic was modified 7 months ago by Nibbled To Death By Ducks.

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Instead of re-booting have you tried logging off and logging back on?

Another thing to try is clearing the icon cache so Windows rebuilds it.

Just curious — How many startup programs are creating icons in the notification area?

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Nibbled To Death By Ducks

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Guess everyone’s watching the National Bread and Circuses… ;{/

EricB wrote:

Instead of re-booting have you tried logging off and logging back on?

This time, I tried logging off, logging back on as Admin*, tweaking the customization there, logging off Admin and logging back on as myself. Now that did do something. I’ll let y’all know how it goes.

(*I keep a separate account as Admin complete with a different password, just for security purposes.)

Win7 Pro SP1 64-bit, Dell Latitude E6330 ("The Tank"), Intel CORE i5 "Ivy Bridge", 12GB RAM, Group "0Patch", Multiple Air-Gapped backup drives in different locations. Linux Mint Newbie
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"The more kinks you put in the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the pipes." -Scotty

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Have you disables Fast Startup ?

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Nibbled To Death By Ducks

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Alex5723 wrote:

Have you disables Fast Startup ?

Yes.

**********************

This falls under the old maxim, “Computers act screwy from time to time for no apparent reason.”

BTW all, it takes me 24 hrs to respond, the way my schedule is lately. Tnx for patience!

Win7 Pro SP1 64-bit, Dell Latitude E6330 ("The Tank"), Intel CORE i5 "Ivy Bridge", 12GB RAM, Group "0Patch", Multiple Air-Gapped backup drives in different locations. Linux Mint Newbie
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"The more kinks you put in the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the pipes." -Scotty

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Instead of re-booting have you tried logging off and logging back on?

Nope, I’ll give that a go next time it acts up. Tonight it booted just fine. >;p

Another thing to try is clearing the icon cache so Windows rebuilds it.

I’ll try that too. Forgotten how, could you give me a refresher?

Just curious — How many startup programs are creating icons in the notification area?

Nine. (I hate to go digging for tools when I want to use them. My bad, I know.)

Win7 Pro SP1 64-bit, Dell Latitude E6330 ("The Tank"), Intel CORE i5 "Ivy Bridge", 12GB RAM, Group "0Patch", Multiple Air-Gapped backup drives in different locations. Linux Mint Newbie
--
"The more kinks you put in the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the pipes." -Scotty

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A search on the internet for — Windows 7 clear icon cache — will yield a large number of “how to” links for you to choose from.

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Nibbled To Death By Ducks

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To eliminate possible drive and/or windows issues open an administrators CMD window and run these three basic command lines one at a time in this order.  If you have a spinning disk HDD, not an SSD use “chkdsk /r”.

chkdsk /f
dism /online /cleanup-image /restorehealth
sfc /scannow

Desktop Asus TUF X299 Mark 1, CPU: Intel Core i7-7820X Skylake-X 8-Core 3.6 GHz, RAM: 32GB, GPU: Nvidia GTX 1050 Ti 4GB. Display: Four 27" 1080p screens 2 over 2 quad.

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Nibbled To Death By Ducks

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Nibbled To Death By Ducks wrote:

Nine. (I hate to go digging for tools when I want to use them. My bad, I know.)

A suggestion to cut down on the start up load:
Place the shortcut that opens the tools you want in a separate folder (give the folder a short name).
Attach this folder of shortcuts to your Taskbar as a Toolbar.
Remove those tools from the Start up which will ease the Start up load.
Those tools are only one click away and always there on the Taskbar, but the start up load will be much less.

HTH, Dana:))

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Nibbled To Death By Ducks

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OK, on the principle of try the simplest first, I tried the old “kill the icon cache” thingie, (forgot about that, senior memory) and the right hand tool bar icons DID seem to load a lot faster, and completely. (9.9 Mb, that’s a good sized cache.)

I HATE troubleshooting intermittent issues, like when a car has a similar problem…”Well, it only does it once every ten or so starts, and then sometimes makes this noise when it does it, but not always…” (Mechanic puts on Stone Face…)

Thanks, all…if this does not consistently fix the issue, I’ll try the suggested others, and if I’m still up a gum tree, “I’ll be back.” ;)>>>>

Win7 Pro SP1 64-bit, Dell Latitude E6330 ("The Tank"), Intel CORE i5 "Ivy Bridge", 12GB RAM, Group "0Patch", Multiple Air-Gapped backup drives in different locations. Linux Mint Newbie
--
"The more kinks you put in the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the pipes." -Scotty

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Oh dear, it looks like “I’m back.” The diddly-darned thing is at it again.

I did try just logging off and logging back on again, but, no, it still didn’t help. Neither did rebuilding the icon cache, darnit. I HATE troubleshooting little annoying intermittent bugs like this.

NOTE: On previous malfunctions, it was determined that the sequence “dism /online /cleanup-image /restorehealth” didn’t work on this version of X64 Pro, for some reason.

Is there a hidden file I should look for? As Groucho Marx said,

“Any questions? Any answers?”

Thanks to all in advance for your advice and patience.

Win7 Pro SP1 64-bit, Dell Latitude E6330 ("The Tank"), Intel CORE i5 "Ivy Bridge", 12GB RAM, Group "0Patch", Multiple Air-Gapped backup drives in different locations. Linux Mint Newbie
--
"The more kinks you put in the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the pipes." -Scotty

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Maybe staggering the startup programs would help.  A simplistic solution would be to use a single batch file to start them and use the TIMEOUT command to insert a delay between each one.

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Nibbled To Death By Ducks

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Nibbled To Death By Ducks wrote:

I did try just logging off and logging back on again, but, no, it still didn’t help. Neither did rebuilding the icon cache, darnit. I HATE troubleshooting little annoying intermittent bugs like this.

I had a similar problem and the way I handled it was to unplug EVERYTHING and isolate what was causing the problem. In my case, it was an addon USB Front Panel I had added. Once that was unplugged, everything went back to normal. So, that’s one idea.

Moderator Edit: to correct source of quote.

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Nibbled To Death By Ducks

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@PL1, I didn’t say what you attributed to me.  I think you meant to quote the author of this topic.

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PL1

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Only thing is, I haven’t altered the system in any way for months….and this devil just pops up about 50% of boot-ups now…I just know that there’s a little gremlin in there somewhere that needs to be squished, and I can’t find it.

Something in the registry that got corrupted? If so, where?

BTW, it started tonight just fine….grrr.

Win7 Pro SP1 64-bit, Dell Latitude E6330 ("The Tank"), Intel CORE i5 "Ivy Bridge", 12GB RAM, Group "0Patch", Multiple Air-Gapped backup drives in different locations. Linux Mint Newbie
--
"The more kinks you put in the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the pipes." -Scotty

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“Well, here I am again, Doctor…”

At times it also it also seems to be completely ignoring “Taskbar Customization Preferences” as well, but only as it applies to the small icons on the right side of the toolbar.

Something definitely has snapped. (No, not me, that happened in ’68…)

Any further ideas, questions, etc?

Win7 Pro SP1 64-bit, Dell Latitude E6330 ("The Tank"), Intel CORE i5 "Ivy Bridge", 12GB RAM, Group "0Patch", Multiple Air-Gapped backup drives in different locations. Linux Mint Newbie
--
"The more kinks you put in the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the pipes." -Scotty

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TechTango wrote:

To eliminate possible drive and/or windows issues open an administrators CMD window and run these three basic command lines one at a time in this order.  If you have a spinning disk HDD, not an SSD use “chkdsk /r”.

chkdsk /f
dism /online /cleanup-image /restorehealth
sfc /scannow

I tried it again anyway…Unfortunately it’s just not supported in this version of Win7 64 pro.

 

Win7 Pro SP1 64-bit, Dell Latitude E6330 ("The Tank"), Intel CORE i5 "Ivy Bridge", 12GB RAM, Group "0Patch", Multiple Air-Gapped backup drives in different locations. Linux Mint Newbie
--
"The more kinks you put in the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the pipes." -Scotty

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