System issues

[Caligo]

My computer has started going crazy this last week. I'm on XP Pro. First issue is with startup. It was going really fast, but now it hangs on a blank screen for a solid 15 seconds before going to the login screen. I've gotten my startup down to bare essentials and it still goes really slowly.

Second issue is a weird networking situation. I'm on a university network and I had everything set up so that my machine was hidden and I had no shares. Now when I open My Network Places I see all of the shared folders for 3 other random people's computers. I don't see their computers(like you do when you normally browse the network) just the folders that are shared. Even when I turn off "Client for Microsoft Networks" I still see them. When I originally set up the machine, turning that option off would completely kill my ability to browse the network. Is this normal?

No viruses either according to Norton.

Thanks y'all!

 

[xsivforce]

Did you make any changes right before this started happening?

 

[Caligo]

OK, I think I killed both birds with one stone. I don't know how the shares showed up, but I deleted them from my network places(didn't even know I could do that) and they didn't come back when I restarted. But when I did that the startup hang shortened to about 5 seconds, which is about where it was before. Thanks!