I have a Dell which has Windows XP. There was an older installation of XP that no longer works and I installed Vista but the hard drive with Vista on it isn't even in that computer anymore. When I start up, some smaller programs work right away (administrative tools, for example) but iTunes and Explorer take about five or six minutes to start up. I click on the Icon and see the hourglass but then several minutes go by before they start. Also, when I am starting up, it asks me which windows I want to use, even though the other two don't even really exist anymore. What can I do to get rid of these "phantom" Windows and also find out what is delaying Explorer and iTunes?

have you run chkdsk /f? when was the last time you defragged? how much ram in the system?

Thanks. I'm not sure what chkdsk is. Where would I find it? I don't recall exactly how much RAM but it's a lot, probably the max (I used to do 3D animation on this computer) and there is tons of free hard drive space, but I'll check again. Defragmented when I removed all the old software. thanks for the feedback.