I'm looking for help from people with a technical understanding of Windows XP, in particular, I believe my problem relates to the networking components.
Windows XP starts up as usual with no problems--this problem does not relate to slow Windows start up. However, consistently after Windows start up, many Internet- or network-enabled applications that I launch manually will not launch fully but are only partially-loaded into memory (no application windows are displayed) for about 10 minutes after Windows start up. Approximately 10 minutes after Windows start up they will complete loading and run as usual from then on. This problem will only manifest again after a fresh start of Windows.
Some of the Internet applications affected by this problem are Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer 8 OpenOffice.org 3, Pidgin IM Client, Google Earth and (perhaps tellingly) the Windows Network Connections control applet.
(Examples of Internet apps not affected are Mozilla Thunderbird, Google Chrome, Skype, and all applications with no networking functionality are not affected).
I have made some observations by looking at the Windows Task Manager that may point to the reason: as soon as Windows has started, the Task Manager shows that these manually launched applications load partially into memory but stop loading at exactly the same certain amount of bytes each time; e.g. Firefox loads about 10Mb into memory and stays at precisely that same amount for 10 minutes before completely loading 10 minutes later. After 10 minutes the applications are loaded fully into memory and become fully operational.
Additionally, during this 10 minute delay, no user name values appear in the User Name column of the Task Manager. As soon as the 10 minutes are up and the User Name values start appearing. Also the process alg.exe is loaded into memory after 10 minutes (but not before).
I use Kaspersky Internet Security 8.0.0.454 with Firewall enabled and Windows Firewall is disabled.
Possible reasons: I believe that a Windows component related to networking is being delayed from launching for some reason for 10 minutes after Windows start up. This is causing some applications that depend on this component to not fully load until this Windows component is loaded but that this Windows component is delayed for 10 minutes. This thinking is just a guess but based on the similarity of the problem described in this article:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/832161/ (see the note in the symptoms section) but the article does not provide a solution because the fixes described have already been applied or are already in effect on my system.
Another possible factor (less likely, I think) is that this problem began about the same time I replaced my older nVidia graphics card with a newer nVidia GeForce 9600 GT card (card drivers have been updated to the latest version). I see this as less likely as I cannot see any connection between graphics cards and the problem apart from I recall the timing of first occurrence of the problem being approximately around the same time.
I would be grateful if someone could help me find, or provide a solution, so that these applications are not delayed and can be loaded immediately after Windows start up, as this problem basically means I cannot use Windows properly for 10 minutes after it's started.
Thanks for your help.
