Computer help forum: Computer takes forever to boot up

While I agree that you need to look through the start-ups, I have to disagree with you on the point of disabling each service until it speeds up. This could be quite dangerous if you don't know what you're disabling!
I recommend checking one of the many start-up programs sites to determine which ones are safe to disable or not.

Some good sites are...

http://www.answersthatwork.com/Tasklist_pages/tasklist.htm
http://www.blackviper.com/WinXP/strangeservice.htm

Another option is to simply google the progam info to see what it's for.

http://forums.cnet.com/5208-6121_102-0.html?messageID=238474#238474

Hope this helps.

Grif

Recently I experienced a problem with my PC booting up extremely slow.
It took the better part of 10 minutes to boot. This was caused by my PC (P4 HT CPU) using 100% of it's processing power to load certain programs. I was able to resolve the issue by going to the START button, selecting Help and Support, Use tools to view your computer information and diagnose problems. Then I selected System Configuration Utility in the left window pain then Open System Configuration Utility. Select the Startup Tab. Look for the InstallShield files issch.exe and isuspm.exe. If you find either or both of these files in the Startup Tab list, uncheck them, click apply then OK. Reboot your machine as directed. After rebooting if all seems well you can put a check in the box that says do not show this box again and all is well. InstallShield from time to time when it updates itself or installs a program loads these files without your permission and a slow PC boot is usually the result. If this doesn't work you can follow the same procedure to uncheck files that load at startup one by one until you find the culprit causing the problem. Hope all goes well, good luck.

Does this PC have lots of RAM in it? Expect slow starts with lots of RAM. 2+ GBs is a lot.

Are all the SPs up to date on this PC? If not, install them. Currently XP is running SP3.

For an comparison of the two go to http://www.theeldergeek.com/services_guide.htm#Services
Using services.msc will speed up your computer. I used service.msc and went from about 8 minutes to 1 minute boot with XP Pro. It works best to review the listing of about 80 processes found on the above web site on one computer while you disable un-needed processes on the second computer. If in doubt, leave the process as it was.

sounds crazy right, is Overkill, right. Do yu hav op system and other disks. After wipe computer then disks will re-install and now yu will hav a fast startup.

this computer was on a a small bussiness i had . I took is out and try to have it on a stand alone but i need help with it i think i have to change something so that is would work better