I’ve finally upgraded my PC to WinXP SP2. I actually upgraded three PCs beforehand this week, so naturally, all the upgrades went without incident except MY OWN.
The problem: my once snappy computer took ages to bootup. It would sit for a minute on the “Welcome” screen, and then show my wallpaper in frozen silence for another minute before loading the desktop.
BootVis only gave me more questions. It actually recorded no CPU activity during the Welcome screen. My PC was just sitting there, twiddling its thumbs.
It wasn’t turns off UDMA in the IDE channels, instantly turning hard drives super-slow.
In dire instances, the BIOS will underclock the CPU and slow everything down. However, the BIOS looked okay.
I scandisked and defragged. I turned off Windows Firewall. I turned off a lot of Services I wasn’t using. I tried every Windows optimization guide on the Internet I could find. Still no joy. I went to bed unfulfilled.
Today, I tackled the problem with renewed vigour. I wasn’t going to stand for a 2min+ wait for a crummy machine!
It wasn’t until I saw this post that a lightbulb appeared.
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5 thoughts on “Taking the plunge into SP2 but not holding my breath”
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Hi I have exactly the same problem as you did. My first attempt to solve it involved switching the WIA service from Automatic to Manual. That worked fine, boot time went back to normal, and I was able to download pix from my camera no problem. But when I tried rebooting after the picture download, I had slow boot time again. I checked the WIA service, and it was set back to automatic. So something I’m using is setting the service back to Automatic, possible ACDSee or Photoshop. I’ll try to isolate it tonight. In any event, what did the Canon drivers do exactly? I’m asking because the Canon site says (regarding the 6.4 drivers):
“If you connect your camera to the Computer (OS: Windows XP) with a USB cable, it is not necessary to install the driver as your camera supports PTP and the standard driver of Windows XP.”
Did you get this warning, and go ahead and install the drivers anyway? Just wondering.
I have a Powershot S110, and use the WIA 3.9.0 drivers. Not sure if that helps. I have my WIA service set to Manual, and thankfully it sticks.
Maybe uninstall that driver and see if that fixes things? It’s possible that installing the WIA driver wasn’t the solution to my problem, it was the setting of the service to Manual…
I have a powershot s40 and I’ve tried downloading the WIA 3.9.0 drivers for it but it just won’t install!! I feel like banging my head on a wall :dead:
Here’s a brainstorm…can we use drivers from the newer Powershot cameras? I notice that if you specify a S500 as your camera, they give you WIA drivers version 6.2.5…maybe they are backwards compatible (and why wouldn’t they be?)!
Whew! I had this pesky error too! I have spent the past FOUR hours pulling my hair trying to narrow it down. 😡 I read and read and read and tried and tried and tried – all to no avail! There was NO WAY I was going to re-install this blasted OS!!!
So for those poor souls that are suffering the same fate with the WIA as myself, here is the scenario.
I also have a Canon Powershot S80. Suddenly the download program (CameraWindow) no longer launched. Hmmm. The event log showed the WIA as detailed above. I’ll spare the details, if you’re here reading this you have suffered enough :ermm: . WIA told me to buzz off on everything and absolutely refused to start.
Then an obscure thing on the microshaft site, er, microsoft, gave me an idea. Now comes the fun/embarrassing part.
I also have a wireless HP Officejet 7410 All-in-One that has scanning abilities. I powered it off. Miracle of miracles – WIA started and I was able to get my Canon to download. Everything was fine after a complete printer power cycle and reboot (with WIA set to automagic start too!)
Moral of story? Should I have power cycled the printer to begin with? Absolutely. Was it as obvious as flipping the circuit breaker in the event of a BSD? Not completely.
Msft has humbled me. Again.