Extremely slow boot time

Hi im running the following:

Windows XP SP2
Inspiron 8500
Pentium 4 2.2Ghz
512RAM
40GB HD

My boot time is very slow. It takes in excess of 5minutes. I only have 2 programs booting at startup. Norton and a temp monitor.

I have no viruses or spy or adware. I am very cautious about these things.

When i first got the laptop it booted like lightning. Why is it not getting slower and slower. What can i do to speed it up.


Another unrelated question is if i format a harddrive will it reset all the bios updates that i have done?

 

Just an overview:
1) damaged/corrupt Operating System files
2) corrupt or invalid registry entries
3) failing HardDrive
4) virial infection
5) problematic or invalid device drivers
6) bad BIOS settings
7) corrupt entries in startup files (related to #1 & 4 ) or registry (related to #2) or a misbehaving startup program such as a firewall, virus scanner, print job monitor, etc.
8) bad RAM
9) failing or inadequate system power.

These are what I can think of, tell us which ones you are sure of not being the culprit and if you need help with troubleshooting, I am sure we could provide further details on each one.

 

There is a free download from this site that will optimize your computer for fast bootups. It takes all the stuff that executes on bootup and places it all in a series along the outer edge of the hard drive. It sped mine up considerably. I think it was called "TuneXP" . I've got so many downloaded programs it's hard to keep track of them.