Long boot time

[JohnnyGage]

I have a system that I put together about 6 months ago. It has been running fine. I recently updated a game (Joint Ops) and needed to download WinRAR. After doing so no my computer now takes literally 7 minutes to boot up--I sometimes have to turn it off and on a couple of times. It stays on the Gigabyte motherboard screen for that long also. Once it boots it works fine. I've tried looking for loose connections, unplugging it totally and restarting--I'm pretty much a novice so that is the extent of knowing what to do. Any other suggestions?

Mobo:Gigabyte P35 DS3L
CPU:Q6600
HD: Seagate 320GB
VGA: MSI 8800 GTS
Memory: G Skill 4GB
OS: Windows XP Home

 

[Ksyder]

I'd guess its a driver problem or something of that nature. I've seen computers take a long time to boot because of shit programs like Norton Antivirus, etc. There is a program called Bootvis which MS put out awhile back and it basically tracks the startup process of the system and graphs it out so you can see what is going on. Its not supported anymore though, and I found it complex to use but you might want to look into it. Also, maybe try going to start > run > msconfig and go to the startup tab and try disabling programs and restarting and see which ones seem to be causing the problem. If you disable something and the long boot time goes away then theres your problem.