long startup + annoying icon

[scroots]

i had my pc upgraded,
my startup takes so long after selecting to boot into windows mode it loads a little then the windows 98 screen disspaears all i can see is the choice i made and a thing about mouse port enable then there is a flashing _ at the top of the screen ( i havent changed my hard drive)
there is no hard disk activity in this time and then around a minute later it loads my wallpaper and continues as normal. what goes on in this 60 seconds or so how can i find out and alter it? it only does it since i had my pc upgraded to an AMD athlon 1100MHz processor and 128 MB of ram.

also when i boot up it shows my ram as 112MB (shared) why is this when surely i have 128 MB of ram in my pc?

also i some how have a network neighbourhood icon on the desktop and i am on a stand alone computer, how can i get rid of it?

any ideas?
thanks
scroots

[sage45]

This explains the long startup... Your startup issue is because when you had the system upgraded they installed the networking components... Your system is now trying to locate and connect to that network... To prevent this, right click on network neighborhood and remove all network components... When you reboot, your system will reinstall the network card and attempt to reinstall the networking components... Before rebooting, goto control panel and double click on the networking icon... Inside here, remove the "Client for Windows Network" but leave the network card installed... If you still have problems configure the client to use a workgroup... Make sure that you are not getting users from a domain as well *third tab, name escapes me*...

As for the 112MB vs. 128MB of ram, check your bios to see if your ram is being shared with an onboard video... Even if you have an installed video card your motherboard can still tell the onboard video chipset to use some of the installed memory... *Saves manufacturers from having to install video memory*

-sage-

[scroots]

thanks i think i have fixed it, finger crossed for when i boot up.

scroots

[deskoh91]

Your computer will use up some RAM when booting up, thats why you are left with 112MB RAM which is very good! I have 256MB Ram and onl left 165MB after bootup!