Ok, recently when I hit Start > logoff > switch user it gets rid ogf the start bar and all my icons but my backround is stuck there for about 5 minutes. Anyone know what my problem could be? I can assure you its not spyware cause im running Adaware SE Professional and Spybot S&D.

If you had a lot of processes running at the time of logoff, that'd probably do it, as windows needs to kill all those extra processes.

Try going and holding down the Windows Logo kley on yer KB and then hitting the 'L' key.

Posted by stealthy If you had a lot of processes running at the time of logoff, that'd probably do it, as windows needs to kill all those extra processes.

To expand on that, it's possible that not only is it a lot of processes but rather zombie processes and zombie threads that aren't shutting down correctly. You could try to uninstall the offending programs but most of the time under a Windows environment that doesn't work. Even now I'm running my box only after 3 weeks after a format and there is 1 zombie process that I know of that's not correct. De-installation? Didn't work. Probably time for you to format...

Posted by Kenshin Probably time for you to format...

Thats my backup plan if I cant trash the other things I dont want.

Thanx for the help, I'll try what I can tonight.

Posted by Jesus Jones Try going and holding down the Windows Logo kley on yer KB and then hitting the 'L' key.

Locking the computer helps solve this how?

First thing you can do is clean out your systray (the icons near the clock). Get rid of anything you really don't use, like that stupid quicktime client, winamp agent, other crap like that. Also, go to start menu > run > msconfig (hit enter). This is a handy utility. Go to the startup tab and uncheck anything unnecessary. The only things I have checked there are ccReg and ccApp which are related to Norton.

While you're idling (no programs running) hit ctrl-alt-del and go to the task manager. Under processes is everything that's running. It's a little bit intimidating as the names of all the processes aren't very descriptive. But you can look for stuff that might be obvious. I kill anything related to an application that doesn't need to have shit in the background, i.e. Quicktime, Paintshop Pro, Adobe this, Adobe that, MS Office, etc. A lot of the processes are "services" which you can look into by going to start menu > run > services.msc

Be careful with modifying services though. Never modify services through msconfig. Check out:

http://www.blackvi...nXP/service411.htm

For a description of what each one does, you can find out if it's really necessary.

I wouldn't reformat just yet.

wow, Thanks, that really helped