garnet

Diskeeper

Another for Diskeeper09, checked out the trial and its superb.

I've always been on Diskeeper, i love the new GUI and freedom from scheduling defrags in the new edition. Its runs fine on the Vista too.

U can also try this http://www.snapfiles.com/get/moveonboot.html

I second that, its got great scheduling features, runs neatly on workstations and the job is much faster.

Check out this link, hope it helps http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q294743/ and http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_defrag.htm I'd personally suggest getting a third party tool with scheduling features.

Here are some free startup managers http://www.wheresjames.com/index.php?page=startupmgr http://mlin.net/StartupCPL.shtml

Try using Move On Boot http://www.snapfiles.com/get/moveonboot.html

Try this link as well http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?...kb;en-us;819017

Yet another vote from me too, it runs on our servers and does a neat job. The scheduling features are cool. The automatic defrag has made the job so much simpler and i personally feel it should be considered a part of regular maintenance for system performance.

Try disabling unwanted startup items, you might want to check by keeping only ur firewall and antivirus loading. RUn a disk clean up and clean out the junk from the system if you havent in a while. Also check your fragmentation levels, run a chkdsk and defragment if needed, these will help improve the shutdown and boot also improve general performance. is ur system protected agaisnt spyware? If not run updated scans with adaware and spybot. Check out this link http://www.aumha.org/win5/a/shtdwnxp.htm

Is the machine sluggish even otherwise, if so try running a disk cleanup, remove the temporary files, recycle bin files etc and then try running chkdsk and disk defragmenter. Possbly ur system is loaded with junk/drive cluttered.

i have a suggestion.. your laptop is old machine... and hdd before were slower.. you will know the clear difference after starting to use the latest machine. I would suggest to improve the performance of the laptop hdd, do diskclean up and try defragging the drive in the safemode.

26Gb as Inthewayboy said, seems quite a load! I wud also suggest CCleaner- its a great free utility, besides the spyware scans which everyone suggested, i would also suggest that after the cleanup you run chkdsk and then the defragmenter, in fact since you do add/edit/delete lots of files, it would be gud to run a disk cleanup and defrag so that ur drive doesnt get cluttered. Setting an automatic defragger wouldnt be a bad idea as it defrags the MFT and paging file and will run daily and defrag whenver needed.

Try deleting your prefetch. Also if you havent cleaned it out lately, run disk cleanup, i guess if ur running out of HDD space or its pretty cluttered it wud be gut to defragment it as it can help improve the boot and shutdown. what about spyware scans?