Trying to help clean up a friends laptop but not sure what's causing it to be so SLOW after you login. It boots up real quick, you click the user and starts the desktop pretty quick but you can't do anything for at least 5+ minutes while something loads? I've tried disabling a bunch of useless stuff in msconfig just leaving some basics for wireless, antivirus, video, & the touchpad. Antivirus is up to date, spybot fully updated & immunized. Ran it only found a few harmless things. Hard drive has been defraged. It should be a pretty peppy laptop but not quite sure what could be slowing it down. One thing I don't care for is Symantec Endpoint protection. Watching the taskbar it seems like it may be the culprit as it takes forever to get rid of the little 0 / and be active. but at the same time the intel pro wireless is trying to connect and it takes quite a while also. Once these finally load it runs alot better. How can I tell what's really slowing him down? Task manager jumps around too much & doesn't really pinpoint what's going on. I suggested trying avg free but you know how some people don't like the idea of free protection that it wouldn't really work. What can I do to pinpoint what's slowing it down? Thanks Chad MSI K8N Neo AMD Athlon 64 3200+ @ 2.21ghz 1.5GB DDR 3200 nVidia N6600 256mb video Segate 500 gig sata NEC ND-3500AG DVD R/RW

Try disabling the other stuff in msconfig.

Well I already disabled a bunch of stuff in msconfig didn't make that much difference. I found a good deal at newegg on ram and added 1GB of ram to the system for a total of 1.5GB which did help quite a bit. Only thing I can figure is the ol bloated Symantec Endpoint protection is hogging all the resources during boot up. MSI K8N Neo AMD Athlon 64 3200+ @ 2.21ghz 1.5GB DDR 3200 nVidia N6600 256mb video Segate 500 gig sata NEC ND-3500AG DVD R/RW

Sounds like you have already diagnosed the problem. Symantec products all seem to be bloat ware.