Windows 7 Computer and Network Connections Freeze at Startup for 15 Minutes

Problem: Whenever, I would turn this Windows 7 desktop computer on, it would freeze up. A little blue circle would spin and spin over the network connections (in the right corner of the task bar). The computer would be totally unusable for at least fifteen minutes. When I would come back to it a little later on it would work just fine. However, as soon as I would reboot, the computer and network connections would again freeze. I talked to the customer and he said he didn’t do much besides installing some Oki printer software. Here are a couple of the troubleshooting steps I tried.

  • I tried System Restore. It errored out on me and did not finish successfully.
  • I ran Malwarebytes, just in case this was virus related. The computer was fine.
  • I tried disabling a couple startup items and services. It  didn’t make a difference.
  • I ran a check disk on the hard drive and it came back clear.

However, I discovered that when I boot into safe mode with networking everything was fine. I decided to open “msconfig” and disable all services from starting.

I turned the computer on and it started just fine. I then enabled a few services at a time. I kept restarting, after enabling a few services. Each time it was fine, until I turned on the “server” service in Windows. The computer and network connections once again froze up.

Through some of my other research I found out that the server service and the print spooler service work together. However, the service server needs to start before the print spooler service does. I unchecked the print spooler and kept the server service checked for startup. I rebooted the computer and it didn’t freeze at all. I decided to make the print spooler service dependent on the server service to start.  Here are the steps to do that.

Step One: To create this dependency, Click Start, and then click Run.
In the Open box, type regedit and then click OK.

Step Two: Locate and click the following registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Spooler

Step Three: Click Add Value on the Edit menu.
Type DependOnService in the Value Name box.
Click REG_MULTI_SZ in the Data Type box, and then click OK.

Step Four: Type LanmanServer in the Data box, and then click OK.
Click Exit on the Registry menu to quit Registry Editor.

Restart your computer.

Once I created that dependency and restarted the computer, everything worked just fine. There was a conflict between the server and print spooler service. The print spooler service was trying to start before the server service. This caused the computer and network connections to freeze. Apparently the Oki software our customer had installed affected those services.

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This was posted by techspeeder.

Special thanks to bangaroo for his troubleshooting help.

 

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