Winlogon - Ethernet Connection (XP Pro)

**cmarsha** · 2002-12-07 03:18

Need some help. Daughter at college with Dell XP Pro laptop. Normally connects in her room through LAN card. PC has wireless card as well. After working without a hitch for months, PC suddenly got very slow. I had her to do a cntrl-alt-del and found that Winlogon.exe was pushing processor to 100% usage. I had her to stop all active programs (AIM and Outlook). No effect. I had her to disable the wireless card. No effect. I had her to unplug the LAN cable. No effect. I had her to shutdown and reboot. No effect. I had her to shutdown, disconnect the LAN cable, and reboot. AAAAHHHH.....CPU at 8%. She then reconnected the LAN cable, and unit works fine. That's now the pattern: so long has she connects the LAN cable after booting, no problems. What's going on here? Bad driver? Problem on the school network? Unit has been checked for viruses, with latest Norton definitions. No viruses found. Unit has been defraged. I'm stumped.

**bigaldoc** · 2002-12-07 11:40

I really don't know if we have the same problem here, but it's worth thinking about. See <!post=my post here,200955>my post here<!/post> during a thread about my "boss" and his newly installed XP. However, the answer in his case required a little searching in the registry for network path indicators ( ) so we could determine where the network searching was going on. As soon as he eliminated those network references, his performance improved measurably. Since your daughter is on a college LAN, looks to me like there's a good chance that she has either "mapped" something, or a MRU list is causing network searches or whatever. Let us know what you think. If your daughter is not "techie oriented," I wouldn't recommend turning her loose on the XP registry.

**DaveA** · 2002-12-07 14:19

Also has she down loaded any of those music, movies and etc sharing stuff?
They make your computer become a server, and will be in use all the time.

**cmarsha** · 2002-12-07 21:07

She doesn't have any peer-to-peer stuff on the laptop. She told me a few minutes ago that she's has now noticed that when the unit goes into standby mode (with everything operating normally), when it emerges from standby, it goes back to 100% CPU usage. Temporarily, I told her to set Standby and Hibernate to "Never" in Power Options. This is only treating the symptom. I still can't pin down the problem.....

**bigaldoc** · 2002-12-07 21:22

<hr> She doesn't have any peer-to-peer stuff on the laptop.<hr>

None that she's aware of maybe. That's the reason I told you what I did about the registry. It could be something she's not even aware of. If unplugging from the network fixes the problem, it's a high possibility.

**cmarsha** · 2002-12-07 21:29

Thanks. I've reviewed the thread. I've got a note off to her now to check for shared drives under Network Places. (Who knows, -- one of the techies could have mapped her to a network drive.) I've going to get her to turn off the "Automatically check for networked drives and folders." And you're correct: I don't want her anywhere close to the registry. Finals in one week and she can bring the unit home to me.

**cmarsha** · 2002-12-08 01:02

I believe we're found it. One of the features (??) of XP Pro is to automatically find networks. When she came home for Thanksgiving she started up her laptop here at the house. I have a network running here so all the computers in ourhouse can get to and share data easily. Sure 'nuff, her laptop found the home network. Then she heads back to school. When she boots up with the My Computer>Tools>Folder Options>Views with "Automatically Find Network Files and Folders" set to Yes, the computer beats itself up trying to find a network that is 1500 miles away. For the moment, she's deleted the network connection and turned off the "Automatically Find......" We'll see what happens. I'll keep you posted but if this works, my thanks to all you replied because you gave me a hint.

**bigaldoc** · 2002-12-08 11:03

Ah, I never would've thought about the HOME network! I figured it might be some class where a professor had had the students acces a database or something else on the network and Windows was remembering it. Well, I hope that you've found the answer. Good detective work on YOUR part!

**cmarsha** · 2002-12-09 00:36

With some trepidation, I'll confirm that the laptop has returned to normal following the deletion of the home network that XP Pro automatically detected. I've also had her to uncheck the My Computer > Tools > View > Auto detect folders and networks. I don't fully understand the implications of unchecking this, but I don't want her laptop trying to create a relationship with every network it encounters as it travels about campus with its wireless card activated. I'm used to the "old fashioned" manual network mapping!

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