Windows XP - Still slow to start

Hi,

I know this is an old question. But, I started having this issue two weeks ago. I have spent the last week reading many threads here and elsewhere on the topic. I have tried:

CCleaner,
Bootvis,
Spy Destroyer,
MSCONFIG - turning off start-up programs,
Stopping all unnecessary service,
Turned off Norton's GoBack services and other resource hungry services.

I have no malware or spyware that I can find after scanning using Norton, CCleaner and Panda's online activescan. I have no spywares. I clean the internet temp folder, I flushed the DNS.

When I ran Bootvis Trace. it tells me that I'm taking over 400 seconds to load ?!! The few essential services I left running took about 120 seconds? There is this long period of time at the beginning of the trace where nothing is happening for a long time. It tells me that my disk cacheing is turned off. But I read other people see the same thing and it's actually NOT turned off. Regardless, when I then try to run "Optimize", my computer just runs away for ever and ever and doesn't stop ! I then found a thread that says you have to have 6 essential services running in order for Bootvis to work. I checked and they are all fine and Bootvis still doesn't complete "optimize" Anyone knows why?

The laptop's start-up got dramatically slower after I deleted some of the Norton protected files ( I meant to clear the Recycle Bin). But they were just a coupel of applications that I reinstalled, such as Divx. Do I need to reinstall Norton?

With IPCONFIG /FLUSHDNS. It works a treat after I run it. But, I have to do it after each boot. I disabled most IE add-ons and turned off "auto detect of DNS". Any other recommendations?

Thanks.

 

Thanks for your reply Zbd21.

Yes, I did do a complete defrag of my hard drive first.
I also did review my prefetch folder. There were only 2 days worth of file, ie. the time stamps were of only today and yesterday. All files were only a few kb. There were about 30 files?

As for removing Norton, I was hoping I wouldn't have to go that far. I paid good money for the license is one thing. If the performance improves, should I re-install? or can you recommend another better tool? AVG? ZoneAlarm?

Thanks.