It didn't display the menu for a second or so, but processor usage was normal. I'll try running for a bit with explorer as a separate process though, see how that affects things.

Ian, might well be Explorer.exe. there is a scrpit problem where this service will literally hog all system resources, causing massive slowdown.
heres a test to see if its explorer.exe causing the problems, open up My Computer and leave it there for a sec, ctrl-alt-del to bring up the task manager and keep an eye on explorer.exe in the processes tab, right click on D: and hold it there, or whatever cdrom is used without a CD in the drive, and watch to see if explorer.exe hangs about with near 100% CPU time for longer than a second, if it does and doesnt drop back down to idle time.
Try going through the Windows Explorer settings and make it a SEPARATE PROCESS.

The 100% pegging can occur when the desktop is trying to render a lot of information, but WinExplorer is equally trying to process folder and drive stuff.

Do you have any network connections that aren't connected? Windows gets very stressed out if it cannot connect to the things it wants to!

Cheers James I'll check that out.

I only about about 20 processes running on startup, no spyware and been through services.msc etc., but its still slow with loads of HDD activity!

microsoft made a program called bootvis, is now disconntinued as far as i know but should be able to get hold of it, basically it will make a tracefile of a bootup process and show exactly whats taking the time - also has an optimize fuction to rearrange files etc etc mixed reports really ive used it on loads of systems that have taken a while to bootup and have worked very well, however tried it on mine that booted up pretty quick to start with and actually made it slower.

[Edited on 23-09-2005 by jamesw]

HijackThis (Program) - Free

Guide here...

http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/index.php?showtutorial=42

[Edited on 23-09-2005 by _Allan_]

Start - Run - msconfig

Startup tab, uncheck what you don't need. http://www.processlibrary.com/ handy site for finding out what each process is associated with.

A program I use called Spy Sweeper, monitors PC in real time, and alerts you if something is trying to add another process to the startup.

My computer takes ages to start up and its ages before I can do anything after I've logged in, is there something that can log stuff like that or display it, so I can uninstall, disable stuff? Running Win 2000.