Long wait/hang during boot up?

[Denis]

I have Win XP: Pro. I can boot up my computer
successfully but recently it takes an unsually long time
to do so... After the "Win XP" logo loading screen... the
system seems to hang up in a black screen... Sometimes it
won't even load but restart itself a couple times before
succesfully loading the Log-In blue welcome screen. Is
there anyway to shorten this wait time (it wasn't like
this when I first installed XP; it booted up very fast).
And what're the reason(s) for this hang up?

 

[Denis]

I fixed the problem. Long boot ups (even shutdowns) or hangups are usually
due to hardware or device driver issues. After a testing each of my drivers,
I discoverd the root cause was my sound card driver. There was a conflict
with my motherboard's built in sound drivers. So disabling all those
motherboard drivers solved the problem. Making sure all devices have SIGNED
Windows XP drivers also help boot times.