"jim" <1@1.1> wrote

> Hello... I have XPSP2....
>
> when I log on to my main account it is slow to start, much hard disk
> thrashing and
> sometimes (I hate this) the tray icons do not appear (although the
> applications are indeed running as I can see in the task manager).
>
> I made a new user account, and made it default (using userpasswords2). Now
> when
> the PC loads in that account it is fast, and all tray icons load!
>
> Here is the info:
> - The applications that start in the tray are exactly the same in both
> accounts, I have carefully checked all startup items on both accounts with
> a program called autoruns.
> - The start menu items are exactly the same...
>
> Both accounts are set to CLASSIC theme with no wallpaper....
>
> the ONLY things I can think of that might be slowing it down are:
>
> The icon cache and the .dat file that contains the registry of the current
> user. but this is only a hunch...
>
> This is a mystery.. does anyone have ANY idea what may be causing the
> difference in speed? (I MUST ADD>>> this is not some problem on THIS
> computer, I have seen this phenomena again and again on various
> computers). I want to understand what might be causing the delay .. so I
> can optimize the load times of my main account...
>
> So basically out of observation I have seen a strange phenomena I cannot
> fully explain... this phenomena is leading me to a discovery of how to
> optimize the pc...


When a notification area (commonly called the systray) icon does not appear
one fix is to disable one or both of these two services, SSDP Discovery
Service, and UPnP service from Start | run | services.msc

You could do some clean boot troubleshooting to see what's causing the lag.

Clean Boot Troubleshooting

How to Troubleshoot By Using the Msconfig Utility in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=310560

How to perform advanced clean-boot troubleshooting in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=316434

How to perform a clean boot in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=310353

--
Rock [MVP - User/Shell]