Slow boot times on Windows XP

[#1]

I signed up to plus.net earlier in the month.  So far, so good.  I use my Macbook using the wireless router and I haven't had any problems.  However, my partner and her dad use a Windows XP box.  The boot time has increased significantly since we started using broadband (used to use dial-up).  The service itself works fine, just increased boot times.  It is annoying my partner and I was wondering if there was something I have missed.  There is Uniblue Speed UP MYPC and AVG Anti-virus installed.  Perhaps they are connecting each time that the system boots to check for updates as it has an active internet connection, whereas it didn't used to on start up.  I don't know.  Any thoughts would be appreciated. 
Thanks. 
Sam

[#2]

have you thought of doing a selective start up type in the run  MSCONFIG and selective start up un mark non windows products ie msn messenger etc.

[#3]

Hiya,
As silverfoxy touches on, it's very likely to be the amount of programmes and processes (note nothing to do with broadband) that are trying to initiate when they are starting up their computer.
Try typing "msconfig" after clicking on the start menu, then run.  Untick things that you don't want to start when they turn on the computer.  Only untick the obvious things though.

[#4]

Is the XP machine looking for the dial up modem

[#5]

I played around with the msconfig settings, and disabling AVG and UNIBlue cut the startup time in half.  I asked my partner's father, and he said that he had recently installed AVG 9.  More research shows that others are having problems with greatly increased boot times with AVG 9.  Not exactly sure where that leaves me.  I doubt I could convince him to use another free anti-virus.  Want to just install Linux, but that would be even less likely to happen.  "How could I live wihtout Outlook Express?" he'll ask.  Maybe an update of AVG with improve things.  Thanks for your help though. 

On a perhaps unrelated note, htis evening the XP box would connect to plus.net  Kept going into offline mode.  After using my Macbook (which was connecting fine) to research what was wrong, I changed a registry key and that sorted things.
Regards,
Sam

[#6]

Check also your AVG settings for "scan at start up"..... 
if this is operating, then re-schedule the scan to start at 10:00 or some other convenient time during the day when the computer is in use....
Avg will always cause some delay at boot up, as it has to "initiate" as most other progs do, to be effective.  With the scan "delayed" until later on, the boot up time should be improved quite a bit.

[#7]

I have found that AVG 8.5 slows my machine down too much and the resident scanner often takes 100% of the CPU. AVG 9 is even worse which is why I no longer use it. Switching to another product has made a big difference - I currently use Avira, which still has its faults but is a far less resource hungry application than AVG. Things like ZoneAlarm firewall can also slow your system down during startup
Many of the XP machines I have used / maintained take a long time to start up due to all the applications that have been installed over time. Many install resident apps to search for updates which take up memory and require time to start up.
msconfig is not the best way to stop background apps. I use spybot search and destroy which in advanced mode allows you to see all the start-up applications for all users and has an easy way to disable or delete them. It also has comments on some of the items it recognises which makes it easier to understand if an app is needed or not.