I've had my laptop for maybe a year now. I'm running Vista Home Premium, and I've noticed something about the startup time. The computer itself boots up fine up to the profile selection screen; maybe 20 secs tops. But, whenever I login, it takes about 2 or 3 minutes before it is completely finished loading everything. My startup file is clean, and I've used "msconfig" to ensure that only the necessities start up. I have noticed that it mostly finishes loading once the security icon appaears in the lower right hand corner. It shows up red because I don't have an antivirus yet, but I'm not sure if that would cause the problem, because it started up faster before, even when I still didn't have an antivirus. How can I fix this?

1. To check if a particular program is slowing the machine when you switch on, go to Control Panel > All Control Panel Items > Performance Information and Tools > Advanced Tools (in the left pane). On this screen the problem is sometimes shown. If it isnt shown, click the Windows Orb (Start) > All Programs > Accessories, right-click Command Prompt then Run as Administrator. Copy & Paste or type wevtutil qe Microsoft-Windows-Diagnostics-Performance/Operational /f:text > %userprofile%\Desktop\Event.txt (note the five spaces) and press Enter. If you Copy & Paste the command, use mouse right-click to Paste it into the prompt. Close the command prompt and double-click Event.txt on the Desktop to open it. Go to the end of the file (Ctrl+End) to see the most recent events. Those with an Event ID in the 100 series are start up events. 2. You can use Process Explorer to see what services are running. To see the svchost processes, let the mouse pointer hover over each svchost.exe in the left pane. Download it from here http://technet.microsoft.com/en-gb/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx

Ok. I downloaded Process Explorer as well as looked through the other things you suggested. I did the first one, looked through the events, and saw a long list of events that were in the 100 series. I'm not sure which ones I should keep and which ones I should not. On Process Explorer, it's pretty much the same thing. I see a long list of processes, but am still unsure as to which ones I should get rid of.

1. The '100' events may contain a name or reason. 2. You candisable theservices you don't need by looking at the list of running processes, e.g. some obvious ones could be Parental controls, Remote registry, WMP network sharing.

1. I found about 5-10 events that showed processes that took too long to startup and caused a problem. One of them said something about audio, and the other said something about SD Card Reader (which I assume it's not so much of a good idea to start up with an SD card in the slot.) The rest of them, though, I could not thoroughly understand why they were messing up. 2. Some processes aren't labeled well, and I can't tell which ones are essential for the OS to run smoothly and functionally.

Go to Task Manager > Processes Tab and right-click on a specific svchost > Go to Service(s) to get a better description of theServices associated with it.

I've done that an got rid of the ones I knew I didn't need, but it is still pretty sluggish at the start. Maybe I didn't get rid of all the ones I didn't need? I'm not sure of all of the processes that I would or would not need.