Preparing Desktop message occurs occasionally on startup

Every now and again when i boot up my laptop and after entering my password. Rather than saying Welcome i get preparing desktop.
When this first happened i got the plain blue desktop with none of my icons. It was not long after a windows update so i system restored to before this update and it appeared to fix the problem.

Its done it again recently despite no updates. However now it seems to take ages to create a desktop.

Rebooting my laptop seems to solve the problem but this is rather inconvenient.

Any solution would be appreciated however i'm not that technically minded so keep it simple if possible. A step by step process would be great.

hannahrudd89 said:

Every now and again when i boot up my laptop and after entering my password. Rather than saying Welcome i get preparing desktop.
When this first happened i got the plain blue desktop with none of my icons. It was not long after a windows update so i system restored to before this update and it appeared to fix the problem.

Its done it again recently despite no updates. However now it seems to take ages to create a desktop.

Rebooting my laptop seems to solve the problem but this is rather inconvenient.

Any solution would be appreciated however i'm not that technically minded so keep it simple if possible. A step by step process would be great.

That situation is perfectly normal. Anytime modifications are made to key desktop components it prepares the desktop.

Unless it is an extraordinarily long delay its normal.


Ken J

thanx for the reply but i think you have misunderstood my problem. When it does load a desktop it is the standard factory one minus my files, background image and desktop icons etc.

I had the same problem and I think I found what is causing this problem!
In the start-up process I get an User-icon on which I need to click to open the login/password dialog box.
When I click on the icon too quickly it seems Windows does not get enough time to finish reading the available profiles and in that case uses the "factory"-profile.
Result: you get the vanilla desktop ...
Since I noticed that, I always wait until the cursor-widget becomes stable (stops rotating while performing some start-up tasks amongst which, I guess, reading the information on available profiles). I usually wait for 2-3 seconds to make sure Windows has finished its work. Then I click on the icon to get the login/password dialog box.
Never had the problem since!
So the message is: be patient.
br
Thomas