30 second pause during WinXP startup.

[P. Lee]

During the startup of my WinXP home edition after going through the
memory check screen, the system seems to pause for 30 seconds before the
blue Windows startup screen appears. I tried to run the windows in safe
mode but still while pressing the F8 button, nothing happens for about
30 seconds before the safe mode option appears. Any solutions?
I remember when I started using WinXP last year, there was no pause in
windows startup.

 

[Raztax]

By any chance do you have a cd(s) in the drives when it starts
(especially burned ones)?
If an optical drive is having trouble reading a disk on startup, there
will be a pause as the drive tries several times to re-read the disk.

 

[Polecat]

I also experience this when I have a USB or PCI wireless network drivers
installed and have been using my network connection, and I try to boot with
my network disabled.....