After startup, if I try to open system properties in control panel, it doesn't open till 2-3 minutes after startup. I also cannot open system restore for the same time. After that, everything opens fine...what gives? What do I do?

Do you know if you have anything setup to run automatically at startup? Virus scan, defragmenting or scanning a drive, or ? A clue might be if your HD stays active after bootup.

What applications are in your 'Startup' folder and also have been set up otherwise to start when the system boots. It is possible that you have anti-virus app and other things that keep Windows 'busy' for a little time after it launches.

You could have a bad sector on the hard drive, conveniently where the system restore and system panel files are located, or you may have a flaw in Windows. Do you check for updates at windowsupdate.microsoft.com? Defragment your hard drive? Maybe those will fix the problems.

Go to Start>run>msconfig and OK it. Go to processes, and disable "Background intelligent transfer" and "indexing service". It's usually just the background intelligent transfer that causes this problem.

It turns out that PerfectDisk, an excellent third party defragmenter, was setup for networked defragging so I switched it to standalone and then I disabled PDengine and PDscheduler in services. FAST BOOTUP WOW! If you searched for this post by google or something like that, if you have questions e-mail me at d8camjordan@aol.com

Have you checked your application event in Administrative Tools, Computer Manager? This sometimes will give some clues. It sounds like it may be in a rety state at startup and if it eventually fails, the event viewer will let you know. Cheers.