I went through all my virus scanning tools, defraged my PC, removed all unused programs, and generally cleaned it up. Now, it is taking way too long to boot. Once it does come up, the speed is very good. Any suggestions?

Thanks,
Kay T.

Yeah, you can do this but make sure you're careful.

Click: Start
Click: Run
Type: msconfig
Click on the "Startup" tab

This is where you have to be careful. You don't want to uncheck any items that your computer needs to start. However, you can remove things like. Adobe Updater, Quicktime and other such programs that are not vital to the system running.

Another thing you could do is Hibernate your system instead of shut it down. This basically puts it in a shutdown where it only draws a minimal amount of power. But it will significantly improve your boots speed.

Your computer may have too many processes running or not enough RAM(possibly a combination of both)

To disable processes that are not needed follow these steps.

1. Click the start button
2. go to Run
3. type msconfig and hit enter
4. go to the startup tab
5. go to ProcessLibrary.com - The online resource for process information! And enter each process to see if it is needed for your computer to operate properly
6. uncheck anything that is not needed
7. restart your computer

To check and see how much RAM your computer has:

1. click the start button
2. right click my computer
3. select properties
4. go to the Gerneral tab your computers RAM is displayed towards the bottom

I suggest at least having 512 MB of RAM on a windows XP system and 1 GB of RAM on windows Vista. More RAM is needed if the computer is used for things such as video editing and gaming.