need help speeding up my boot/reboot up time

i'm running xp on a toshiba satelite a30-203. My boot time is literally about 4 minutes long. the desk top loads up quick but the stuff in my start task bar takes forever to load. i have removed other stuff from this tray in the past but it has slowed again. besides i onlt have 4 programs that load up there including zone alarm, MSN messenger, Avast anti virus, internet connectivity icon. please help me speed this process uo cause it's kinda irritating the hell outta me to wait so long everytime i have to reboot
thx

 

Have you tried deleting prefetch? Also run a disk cleanup and get rid of temporary files and such, and defragment, this might help speed up your boot.
http://www.tweakxp.com/article36979.aspx
Also hope there is sufficient memory to support your applications.

 

Also, go here and run through all the steps It's long, but well worth it. You will eventually get to a step about speeding up the boot times, but before you do that, follow all the steps on this page. You'll be refered to Black Vipers site, which will help you turn off unneeded processes, which will also help boot up time. At the end of it all, you comp will run much better, and it's such a good feeling.
Eric
BTW, I assume you are running XP? If not, give us some more info on your OS, hardware, etc.