Damned DCOM delay

May 9, 2006 8:56 AM

When my Windows XP laptop starts up it gets to a point where there's a few minutes of delay before the network or other critical stuff starts. I've tracked it down in the log to a specific app's starting but the "did not register with DCOM within the required timeout" error is eluding my efforts at resolution.

Turns out that an app related to my Nokia phone's PC Suite is having some sort of problem starting and it's holding up other things after it. The exact message in the system log is this:

The server {F3F8262D-99B5-4851-A2B2-55383E2CE392} did not register with DCOM within the required timeout.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.


Once it gets past this point everything continues normally and the app in question, MPAPI3s.exe, is running in the process list. If it's hung it's non-critical since my phone syncs and even operates as a bluetooth modem without a problem.

I came across this page which advised running Dcomcnfg.exe and letting it find some unlinked modules. Which it did, but none of them were the troublemaker in question and it hasn't helped matters.

In the scope of things it's not a horrible problem but it does impede my ability to turn the laptop on and get to work out in the field. I'm about at the end of my rope with dealing with it and any suggestions would be appreciated.

posted by phearlez to Computers & Internet (5 answers total)

Not a solution exactly - but would it not be easier to run that program as and when you need it rather than letting it auto-start?

Are you using the latest version of the Nokia software? Can you download a more recent build?
posted by ed\26h at 9:14 AM on May 9, 2006

Response by poster: It's the most recent version and the problem existed with the earlier versions as well. There's no good way to run this as-needed - like most sync software it wants to start immediately and run constantly. I'm more inclined to suffer the delay than wrestle with that aspect, though I'm considering looking for some way to do a delayed start on the off chance it's trying to access a resource that's not yet initialized.
posted by phearlez at 10:02 AM on May 9, 2006

Maybe it's just a matter of getting it to start later in the boot process. Look into removing it from where it's starting (check Sysinternal's Autoruns tool: http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/Autoruns.html) if possible, and placing it in your Start menu's "Startup" folder. This runs later on, from what I remember.

You could also put the startup command in a batch file after a delay of some sort, and put that in the "Startup" folder, insted.
posted by catkins at 12:17 PM on May 9, 2006

Are you running "ZoneAlarm" on your computer? I had the same problem with another software, could never figure it out until I read in a thread somewhere that ZoneAlarm was the culprit. To try, I uninstalled it and the delay went away. I re-installed ZoneAlarm, and for a while it ran without any delay, but after a number of reboots (and a couple program installations), it's back again.
posted by tuxster at 12:50 PM on May 9, 2006

Response by poster: Nope, no zone alarm. However this is apparently not a problem unique to this piece of software - the above linked url mentions other pieces of software having the same problem, some of them caused by a MS patch. You might want to do the same google I did for the phrase from the log, the MS solution might be pertinent for your issue.
posted by phearlez at 1:47 PM on May 9, 2006