Vista - Problem booting up

I'm trying to fix a problem on a new (about 6 weeks old) gateway computer
running vista home. When I first start up the computer nothing works. Well,
I should say nothing but explorer (both internet and Windows). After 30
minutes to an hour, I am finally able to start running programs. Before
that, anything I try to run gets to a splash screen and then freezes. I
think I've narrowed the problem down to McAfee Security Center as that is the
last thing that finally loads before stuff starts working. I'd rather not
uninstall it yet (as this isn't my computer...I'm helping a friend), but was
wondering if anybody else here had seen a problem like this and knew of a
solution. To the best of my knowledge the computer is fully updated.
Thanks for any help.

Upon further testing I don't think it is McAfee that is causing the problem.
I've disabled all services and programs in the startup related to it and the
problem still occurs.

"Matthew Zimmer" wrote:

> I'm trying to fix a problem on a new (about 6 weeks old) gateway computer
> running vista home. When I first start up the computer nothing works. Well,
> I should say nothing but explorer (both internet and Windows). After 30
> minutes to an hour, I am finally able to start running programs. Before
> that, anything I try to run gets to a splash screen and then freezes. I
> think I've narrowed the problem down to McAfee Security Center as that is the
> last thing that finally loads before stuff starts working. I'd rather not
> uninstall it yet (as this isn't my computer...I'm helping a friend), but was
> wondering if anybody else here had seen a problem like this and knew of a
> solution. To the best of my knowledge the computer is fully updated.
> Thanks for any help.

Problem solved. It turned out that the shared printers were hanging and
causing the large delay. I removed printer sharing from them and the
computer booted right up. Not sure why the sharing was an issue, but I'm not
going to worry about it at this time.

"Matthew Zimmer" wrote:

> Upon further testing I don't think it is McAfee that is causing the problem.
> I've disabled all services and programs in the startup related to it and the
> problem still occurs.
>
> "Matthew Zimmer" wrote:
>
> > I'm trying to fix a problem on a new (about 6 weeks old) gateway computer
> > running vista home. When I first start up the computer nothing works. Well,
> > I should say nothing but explorer (both internet and Windows). After 30
> > minutes to an hour, I am finally able to start running programs. Before
> > that, anything I try to run gets to a splash screen and then freezes. I
> > think I've narrowed the problem down to McAfee Security Center as that is the
> > last thing that finally loads before stuff starts working. I'd rather not
> > uninstall it yet (as this isn't my computer...I'm helping a friend), but was
> > wondering if anybody else here had seen a problem like this and knew of a
> > solution. To the best of my knowledge the computer is fully updated.
> > Thanks for any help.