3+ Minutes to boot up

[mike12]

A friend gave me his older Gateway Laptop P4, 2.0 Gig processor, 256 meg of ram to work on.
I kept getting messages that different files were corrupt or missing so I deceided to format the hard drive that had XP Home on it, and install XP Pro for him. He tells me that it is much slower now. When it boots up, I hear the Windows sound after 1 minute and 5 seconds,
but the hard drive light keeps blinking for another 2 minutes. I installed CCleaner, Easy Cleaner, Microsoft Office 2003, Microsoft Money, AVG. DEfragged the hard drive. Checked MSCONFIG, and only AVG is set to start at bootup. Any other suggestions ? Would XP Pro make that big of an inpact speed wise, versus XP Home. I know the 256 meg of ram is way too low, but I think the computer should be faster. Many thanks, Mike

[Panama Red]

Have you tested the hard drive yet to assure it's not failing? The UBCD would give you hard drive diagnostic programs.

[glc]

It's building indexes. Disable the indexing service. Upgrade the ram, it's still pretty cheap.

[mike12]

Thanks Panama Red and glc for the suggestions.
Panama Red...that UBCD sounds a bit complicated for me. I might give it a try though.

[EzyStvy]

Did you install the chipset drivers etc?