very slow loading my personal settings

when I select my account to log on to windows it goes to the "loading your personal settings screen" and sometimes stays there for four or five minutes before bringing my settings up. It does this now for all four users on our computer. We have lots of memory and power but it just kind of lags at the loading stage. once loaded everything is fine and you can even switch between users with no lag time.Is there a way to speed up the process again. Thanks

 

Turning off XP's unnecessary services does wonders. It takes a little time but it's well worth it in terms of better system performance and online security.

There are numerous guides online for which services to turn off, which to set to manual and which to leave on automatic but I've found Black Viper's site the easiest to use.

Have you scanned for spyware? If not, download, install, immediately update and then run Spybot and/or AdAware. Read the help files to familiarize yourself with how they work. I recommend you use them both since each tends to find things the other misses. Let them clean up any spyware found.

Then, to be doubly sure, download and run CWShredder (link to the download is near the bottom of the page).

 

Start Up Control Panel will allow you to keep unneeded programs from loading at boot. (When I want to check my email, I do not need Office loading and running in the background, for example!) Leave your firewall and AV protection alone, as well as system processes- almost everything else can either be removed from the start up menu within the program, itself, or use this freebie utility. It will add a tab to your Control Panel, and is very simple to use.

Johanna