question for the computer learned, page-19

You are right but in my case I just tired of trying the various adjustments to see what might work. It seems that XP running and booting very slowly is not an uncommon problem.

The normal suggested solutions seem to be to do with cleaning the registry and defragging the hard disc, both of which little effect in my case. I had an idea what caused the problem, some extra codecs my wife installed that intefered in some way with the existing sound software, but there just didnt seem to be an easy way to get passed it as removal of the various software didnt seem to have any effect.

A system reinstall did the job quickly and gave a clean slate to work with. I am not unhappy I went that way.