i recently got a new hp. while starting up, for some reason right after that green bar is done moving, i get a blue screen which says "windows is starting up". The problem is it stays for about 32 seconds everytime before i can log into my user name. i know its not that big of a deal but its bugging me. my older dell doesnt even show that blue screen when starting up. btw my hp did it from the start. its not like i downloaded something that started it.

here are some specs of my hp:

amd xp 3000+
160 gb
512 ram
nvidea geforce fx 5200 128mb
windows xp

from my dell:
intel 2.4 ghz
80 gb
512 ram
nvidea geforce mx 440
windows xp

thx for the help

1stI would recommend turning of uneeded/useless services. (ref)www.BlackViper.com look at XP services.
2ndDo you have all the lates updates?
3rdHave you attempted a disk check/scan after reboot.

well im pretty sure i have the latest updates. i just did a disk check and had no improvement. but i went to blackviper.com and fooled around with the settings and got a nice speed increase. its now down to 11 seconds. thanks affleck, but is it normal to get the "windows is starting up" screen?

Normal no I dont think so is the text white in the blue screen? I have not heard of this screen

Yes, it's perfectly normal.

Normal then why dont I see the screen!

the screen has the same look as the user login screen but just says windows is starting up before is shows the user names.

I get it ,with 3 users on this computer !! then the users login in screen

You said HP do they show their screen? (Kind of like DELL's boot up screen)I strive for fast boot up's like you. I would also be pissed off if I wasnt booting up with in a time frame according to my CPU(quicker than average cpu in its gig range ).Post back the exact time(sec) it takes from physically turning on the comp till the logon screen.You might can change somthing in your BIOS to make it quit that.

from starting the comp to login screen - 45.31 seconds

the windows is starting up screen - 11.21 seconds