It is before you see the desktop, but after the boot screen right? The login screen. Have you had any spyware/adware issues in the past? Reason I ask is because you might have some broken winlogon items sitting in the registry.. Otherwise, yes.. General startup items dont help either.. Like some have mentioned, tone down the number of utilities going on.. You shouldnt need that many.. Especially so many that are always starting up and running on their own.. If you want to go to the extreme.. After a lot of tweaking and tuning, in opinion, there is a point where a nice clean install of windows is a better bet.. It will seem a lot smoother.. And if you can afford the time (reinstall, moving documents, etc), it is well worth it.. I wouldnt recommend everyone or just anyone doing this regularly though. Those are a few starters.. If it is after the login screen.. It is mostly higher level software.. Not low level like drivers and such. I've had reinstalled windows, and moved documents as u said, and now the pc is running better!!!, i haven't any problems with Spyware/adware or virus never in fact, the problem was the Windows Vista Transformation Pack cuz i installed an English version and i have windows xp in spanish so when i had installed this pack the system got freezed and i restart the pc, and worked fine for a while but the start to get me prblmz. I think that was the reason why i had the system working unstable.......thanks for your help