Long startup times

[Arden]

I was wondering if anybody could help me improve the startup time for my computer. I have noticed that ever since I got my computer the startup time has become slower and slower, although the difference is not too big. By slow, I am referring to the Windows bootup screen where the bar loops around. Before it only took 3-4 loops but now it is nearing almost 7 loops to startup. This adds up to almost 40 seconds to startup my computer, whereas before it took around 20. I have Windows XP Home Edition with SP1 installed (the only reason why I didn't install SP2 was because my startup time was already getting slow enough).

My specs are:
AMD Athlon 64 3000+
ASUS K8V Motherboard
Corsair XMS 1GB PC3200 DDR400 SDRAM
ATI Radeon 9800 Pro

I have read many tips on improving startup time, such as deleting the Prefetch folder, and I frequently use TuneUp Utilities 2004 to fix my registry problems. I have tried defragmenting my hard drive and it did not seem to make much difference to startup time, only to general performance. I do as much as I can to tweak my computer for maximum performance, incase any of you think I am a complete newbie at computers, but this is just puzzling me. If any of you have any suggestions you would like to give, please post it, I would appreciate it.

Thanks in advance.

[Arden]

bump? :rolleyes:

[Sid]

You can try a program called bootvis. Never used it but its supposed to tweak start up

[brembo]

What kinda HDDs are ya a usin? Two, one...RAID....hard drives make a big difference in the bootup speed(well, at least loading windows and such).

[YARDofSTUF]

When its loading it could be loading a lot more items

Like roxio's direct cd, winamp agent and god knows what.

You can goto Start and type run, then type "msconfig" and got the startup tab, uncheck what you dont need


Also under accessories and system tools u can run disk cleanup and then defrag your hard drive, that could help alot too.

Do you use anything like spybot or adaware? thats another biggie.