When i start my PC, Win XP loads fine but then I get the "Welcome" sign which stays on for about 5 mins before the desk top comes on along with the windows start up sound. Earlier it used to take hardly a second before the desktop would come up after the "Welcome" sign.What is wrong? Any suggestions?

Do you have a network card ? If so, it is looking for an available IP address - I had this problem. Just assign an IP address, 192.168.0.150 or something and a subnet mask of 255.255.255.0 and it'll fix the problem (if that's what it is)

yeah i have windows XP professional and also windows 2000 on another machine and windows loads fine but once its all loaded i have to wait 2-3minutes before i can open anything and like some programs are already running and some arent and yes i have a dynamic IP address cause i run DSL well i've been looking for a cure for the problem cause its prety annoying does anyone have any idea?

The 2nd post already mention that, assign a class C IP address like 192.168.10.10 to your network interface... This is because if u use DHCP, after you logged in to your XP, the system boardcast a request to the network and try to obtain an IP address, before your system receive a reply, it just wait until timed out. Since you will not get an IP address before you log in to your ISP, you will have to wait until time out every time u reboot.