hey well this past week i've been noticing some strange behavior from my box, weird startup times, random hangs, and such..
im running win xp with sp2, on an amd xp 2600+, for more specs check out my profile.. thanks in advance

try running msconfig from the run menu and disable anything on the startup tab that you dont recognize.

yeah I do that, but instead I just find out where they are located in the registry and edit/delete them.. and the only things that 'msconfig' sees are:
my customized clock
vid. card manager
and firewall[trend micro]

thanks.

Deleting straight from the registry will work, but its more difficult to reinstate a setting should you delete one by accident. Not to mention that msconfig will check all the registery startup keys (hkcu, hklm) and the common startup folders. Also you can use msconfig to temperarily disable system services. So you can troubleshoot if any startup services are causing you problems.

when I restarted, it hanged for a while on welcome screen.. and I searched in the forums for solutions but none of them applied to mine and some of them I already have tried.. any more suggestions will be good.. thanks