Quote "...you have to remember that if you store pictures, word doc's, music files,video clips,or add fonts to your pc ......windows loads them ALL up every time to boot up......"

Windows does not load pictures, word doc's, music files,video clips every time you load up. Data files are only loaded when required.

Outlook takes a long time to load as you add more files as it loads all of the PST files and these contain all the email data and picture links. If you load outlook at startup you will considerably slow down startup. You can speed this up by using the archive facility as archives are not loaded until opened.

The amount of software on the system effects the load time as windows loads the registry and has to set all the variables and the size of the registry grows with additional software load. It processes every item in the regisrty whether or not the software is present hence the need to ensure the software cleanup process removes unneccessary items.

Shortcuts are a common problem here. Unnecessary shortcuts alsso slow the system.

In xp if you have more than 400 fonts loaded the speed is impacted significantly. Loading devices including external drives, printers, memory card readers etc slow down the load and the temp file is also critical - this is processed on loading and if you have too many files here you can actually stop windows loading.

Having programs loading at boottime also slows the load as the programs not only have to be loaded but they eat up cycles while loading.

A good but expensive resource os Windows XP Annoyances for Geeks by David A Karp. There is also http://www.annoyances.org/