Having troubles with Windows XP startup, it hangs at the Microsoft Windows XP Professional black start page. The comp. used to bootup in like 20-30 seconds, now it is taking like 2 minutes. Recently had serious issues between Xp and Microsoft Office XP, osa.exe caused huge crash but I was able to recover. Now XP is just hanging, also, while in use the pointer arrow seems very jerky. Any ideas?

Make sure your cpu is getting good cooling. I remember once when my win xp used to give me blue screens and hang, but it was coz of my cpu heating....

The CPU is running at 39 Degrees Celsius, the motherboard health monitor says that is well within normal guidelines. Anything else? Anybody?

I would try the following: 1. Check for any unnecessary programs running in the background by running “msconfig” and then click the start-up tab to disable any unwanted programs (some programs may try to connect to the internet immediately on start-up). 2. If you using a high speed ISP make sure your getting connected to it. If it can’t find a link windows will take the time to try and find one and if it can’t find one it will then choose a local IP address. 3. If it’s connected to a network, same as above, it will try to connect to it as soon as it starts. (I’ve run into this problem several times at home and at work.) 4. Get a Trojan scanner and scan your system for any Trojans. If there is a trojan and will/can slow everything down. 5. Make sure your system is running the latest in the windows updates. 6. Make sure you don’t have any unwanted ad-ware or spy-ware. This is what I use to get rid of ad-ware/spy-ware. http://download.com.com/3000-2144-10194058.html?tag=lst-0-1. 7. I have heard you can try to reinstall the OS on top of itself (NOT REFORMAT) which it seems to work great, this is coming from saltynetguru@neotechcc.org which has the web site www.neotechcc.org. 8. Try reducing the size of space used on your HDD that your system restore uses. You can find this in your system properties. Hope this helps out. Regards, PDN

Couple more things: 1. Clean out your HDD. 2. Uninstall any un-wanted/un-used programs. 3. Clean out your temporary internet files. 4. Put as many files on to a CD that you can and then delete them off of the HDD. (files such as music files, pictures, documents, etc.) 5. Try buying a cooling fan specifically for your HDD because HDD's get hot too. 6. Make sure your recycle bin is empty. 7. Defrag your HDD. Regards, PDN

Thanks, PDN, did everything you said, except trying to layer new windows over old, but my comp is still dragging. Any more ideas, anyone?

Try to pop in your XP install CD. Restart your PC and try to run repair windows. Sometimes this will correct problems. This want re-install windows, it will just fix problems. Hope this helps, PDN