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Startup problem - Synaptics stall?
Just recently (in the last month) I've been having problems on startup. Windows starts properly, I can start loading my profile, but it all stalls before loading completely. I can't see what's going on (would a HijackThis log help?) but it seems to be associated with initialising the Synaptics systray icon. The hard disk stops spinning and if I hover the mouse over the taskbar (the trackpad is still working, even though the icon is not there) it just gives me an hourglass. Any attempt to click on something and get things going results in the ding of doom and the computer freezes up. I have to kill it by pressing on the on/off button. A reboot is usually perfectly OK. There is nothing in the Event log to show what might have gone wrong.
Any ideas on what's happening and how I can fix it?
Kate
Dell Inspiron 6400, bought 2006 but still under warranty; running XP SP3 fully patched. Up-to-date antivirus from CA, SpyBot scan clean.
DELL-Jesse L
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October 13th, 2009 07:00
ElviraKate,
Thank you for using the Dell Community Forum.
Have you tried reinstalling the synaptics touch pad software/driver back into the system? If not, you may want to do this to see if that will resolve the issue.
ElviraKate
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October 13th, 2009 11:00
Hi Jesse, thank you for replying. The touchpad works perfectly well, even when the hard disk has stalled apparently on initialising the systray icon, up until the general crash when nothing works. I've read on other bits of this forum about problems after upgrading/reinstalling the Synaptics drivers, so would rather not do this until it was necessary. Do you know how I can verify that it is indeed the systray icon that's the problem?
Kate
ElviraKate
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October 15th, 2009 05:00
Further to this: I'm not sure that it is necessarily Synaptics that is causing the problem. On looking more closely, when loading my profile, there is a split-second moment when the screen goes black - somewhere between the volume icon appearing and the wireless connection or Synaptics one, it varies. If this happens, everything is OK. If it doesn't, then everything stops and eventually if I hit the keys often enough, it all freezes. How can I find out what's going on?
Kate