Video and Icons Question

[tacoeater]

I often get a computer in the shop that has icons that disappear slowly then re-appear. Usually I think this is a hard drive going bad. I have checked memory and have not found that to be the cause. These same computers usually have the task bar that starts out as a solid color then finally load the text and icons.

Anyone have any observations about this. Please share.
alan

[Force Flow]

What are the specs on the machine(s)?

Has it been scanned for spyware, viruses, malware, etc.?

[tacoeater]

this is not just one machine. i usually clean everything up with adaware, spybot, avg antispy and virus usually avg.
this is a thing that happens on many computers i have seen that are supposed to all cleaned up.
sometimes these computers (plural) start at the top of the screen and all the icons disolve a row at a time until it gets to the bottom then they all re-appear a row at a time till they are all back.

[Panama Red]

Is this during the startup process when you first turn the pc on? I've seen the same thing quite regularly on older hardware running XP and on any pc running Norton or McAfee software. They seem to slow down the startup processes. I just write it off as normal on older pc's.