Alright here's a little thing that I picked up that should dramatically increase your computer's startup time. It's somewhat for advanced users but really if you just follow me closely you shouldn't have any trouble.
Startup Tweak.
This is for Windows XP users only.
(1). So here's what we'll do first: click on the Start button then click on the "Run" command. When the window appears type: "
regedit", the Registry Editor should now appear. Now this is where you need to follow me closely, select
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE ->
SYSTEM ->
CurrentControlSet ->
Control ->
Session Manager ->
Memory Management ->
PrefetchParameters, in the right-pane window double-click on
EnablePrefetcher, set the value data from 3 (default) to 2. This will make it so that Windows will only prefetch data concerning the Windows startup.
(2) Select My Computer and go to
C:\WINDOWS\Prefetch. You can delete everything in that folder, it only collects a small amount of data on how some programs start but from my experience deleting has made little to no difference in startup time. This will not stop programs from loading. If you're still a little concerned about this you could always Cut & Paste everything to a different folder so that you can restore it later if want.
(3). Download
Bootvis, install it to your computer, Start the program, click on "Trace" in the menu bar and select Optimize System. After 10 second it'll restart your computer. You may notice that it'll go through the boot screen quite a bit faster but then it'll take a bit longer at the Welcome screen, this is normal. Once in Windows it'll automatically start to optimize the startup configuration then when it's finished it'll close and you're done.
If you check back on the Prefetch folder under WINDOWS you'll see that there are only 2 files, the Layout and the PF File. You can restart your computer again to see the final results.
Tell me if this worked or didn't work.