OK - A couple possibilities: 1) If you are in a cold climate and you powered back up - your HDD may be a bit cold (especially if you tend to leave it powered on most of the time.) If you let it run a while to warm up, it may work better/faster. See the operating temperatures for your system - my lappy wouldn't power up for several hours after I retrieved if from the back of my car in winter-time. When it did, i had to let it run fans for a while then I warmed up the HDD by running video tests over and over and over. 2) Make sure to run windows update. if you powered back on and it did a partial patch, it could be looking for orphin files to complete a patch. 3) Verify you have current BIOS drivers 4) Go to http://pcpitstop.com/ and run FREE diagnostics. It may pinpoint the problem. 5) Is your HDD full or less than 10% left? It may be struggling to find everything. 6) Last thing I can think of is it may be running a search program to make finding desktop info faster. try ctrl/alt/del and see what is running on your puter. Make sure you have no alternate programs running in the background. google each item in question to find more info on each. i think the minimum processes under Win XP Pro is like 39 or so. if you have 60+ you really need to clean your progs up. I am sorry - i know nothing about Vista except that it is not a good gaming format. Hope this helps!

Hmmmm... Brain scratching now... Do you have many shortcuts on your desktop? Everytime you computer starts up, it has to locate each file it goes to, slowing down the processing. You can relocate them under My Programs - you know where they are. just keep your Recycle Bin and your Unused Desktop Shortcuts on your desktop (you can even relocate the shortcuts in the UDS previosly mentioned and it won't have to find them off the bat). Also, do you have a pretty picture on you desktop - is your vidcard struggling to support in 32-bit High color? Your card may be dying. Another option to look at: R Click your computer. go to System Properties/Advanced. Click Performance Settings then hit the radio button for Adjust for Best Performance. I will have to hit my head against the wall for anything else to jar loose as far as ideas go. sorry i can't be more helpful. I know that has to suck. :(