The most common cause of slow startup are excessive programs loading up at 
startup. You said there appears to be no harddrive activity, so this might 
not be it, but it is worth considering. How many icons are in your tray 
after startup? What does the three finger salute show running?

Here is a link that addresses the phenonom: 
http://msn.pcworld.com/article/124577-1/article.html

William Closure

----Original Message Follows----

Date:    Sat, 29 Jul 2006 08:59:30 -0500
From:    Russ Cox <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Compaq connundrum

I have a Compaq Presario 5050, 333MHz Celeron, 164MB RAM running Windows
ME.  Two perplexing issues:
It spends a full minute or more showing the Compaq splash screen with no
apparent hard disk activity.  Then it proceeds to boot up into ME.
Takes more than 2 minutes to fully boot, quite a bit longer than other
computers using the same connection. What's causing that long startup
delay?

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