very slow startup

hey all,

I just installed WinXP with SP1 on my other computer. It's a P3 at 733 Mhz with 256 MB RAM. Before installing i formatted the drive (40 gb, 2 partitions of 15 and 25 gb) to NTFS.

When i start up, i get the WinXP screen (loading....) and at first nothing happens....the harddisk isn't doing anything..just nothing...

finally, after 2 minutes or so, windows starts up.
does any1 have any suggestions to make this a bit quicker?

thanx!

obelix

 

The first thing to try is shutting down all of XP's unnecessary services that are turned on by default.

Go to Black Viper's site for the complete list, explanations and recommedations. It's a somewhat tedious process but it made a lot of difference in the boot-up time on several systems I've dealt with.

In addition, if you don't use MS Messenger, which XP loads on startup by default, after bootup, go into Messenger's preferences and change that.