I am using a new Toshiba Satellite P200 laptop with Windows Vista. I am also using a plug and play keyboard, mouse and printer, as I prefer this in situ. All operates well once fired up, the trouble is that when I boot up, the first three system tray icons appear immediately including a crossed through internet connection icon, then there is at least a two minute gap before the rest appears, the first of which is the integral synaptic pointing device which I think is the integral laptop keyboard, together with the connection of internet (removal of cross) from a household BT hub.

If this delay is the internet connection, then is there a way of switching this off at startups and connecting on the desktop when required? On the other hand, would the plug in keyboard have a conflict with the laptop keyboard and would it then be OK to disable the syaptic pointing device if possible of course. A lot of questions, but the slow startup is really frustrating.

Bossy-

The first step in diagnosing a slow startup is to find out every single application that is starting up when you boot up your PC. Most times, the icons you see in your system tray are only a fraction of the total objects that are actually booting up when you push that power button.

I'd be happy to help you but first we need to know what things are starting up when you boot up your PC.

If you could go to: http://www.spywareinfo.com/~merijn/programs.php#hijackthis
And download the latest version of 'HijackThis' and install it, you can generate a report in the program that will list every single application that starts up when you boot your PC.

If you could then either cut and paste the list in this thread or email me a copy, we can get to work on fixing the problem.

-Dan

Many thanks for your suggestions. I have managed to cut down the startup programs down to five, including the hub connection. The slowest is a red ATI square which I probably need. I am now inclined to think that is the internet connection which it is waiting for and wonder if there is a way of turning this off the startup and just turning it on when I go into the browser?

Hmmm, I doubt it's your Internet connection because usually your network adapter is the last thing to start on a bootup. Unless of course you have Boot from Lan enabled in your BIOS, which by default is usually OFF, so unless you specifically turned it on, chances are it's off. In addition, there is no way to have the network adapter only come on when you open your browser.

One thing you can try is go to START > RUN and type in: "msconfig" without the quotes and hit Enter.

This will bring you to your System Configuration Utility. Be VERY CAREFUL about changing things here because it could screw up your system.

Go to the STARTUP tab. All the items with green check marks are things that are starting up when you boot up your computer. Chances are, there are a few things in there that you don't need.

If you could list those items here, mainly just the 'Startup Item' name and the location (for example: C:\Windows\System32\) I could let you know which you can uncheck.

If you're not keen on typing that list, you can take a screenshot, post it here, scroll down some more and take another screenshot, etc.

Another thing that could be causing a slow boot are Services. You may have several services starting that don't need to be starting. By default, Microsoft enables several completely unnecessary services that are resource hogs. You can check this list by going to START > SETTINGS > CONTROL PANEL > ADMINISTRATIVE TOOLS > SERVICES

If you can type our or screencap the list of services, I can let you know which we can disable.

Finally, the third thing that could be affecting your startup time is hardware. Do you know how fast your processor is? How much RAM you have? How much space you have left on your C: drive?

We can fix this Bossy and get your system starting up much faster.