Slow progress bar on boot before the splash screen, 2minutes

ok..here is the short story

Reformatting girlfriend's laptop. Installed Windows XP SP2, and now everytime it boots, it takes the ntldr progress bar 1-2 minutes to finish (I think that is what you call it, the black and white progress bar before the windows logo screen, the one that you used to see in Win 2k but now you rarely see it unless you are coming out of hibernation mode)

when you bot, it boots normal, then the progress bar starts going from left to right VERY slowly. Once it makes it half way it goes very quickly. Then it loads the Windows XP logo screen with the graphical progress bar and boots shortly into Windows. When it Windows it works perfectly, with no slowdown. It is only the black and white progress bar before Windows even loads that is taking so long.

Additional Information: I have had this happen before on the same computer, I just forgot how I fixed it. I want to say I did something in debug like a low level format, but I tried it again on this and it did not work. after I repartitioned and formatted, it was still going SLOW on the progress bar. Or maybe I did a fdisk /mbr as well, but I tried it this time and it still isn't working. Keep in mind that in any other situation, this computer NEVER displays this progress bar because it loads so quick... and usually the "Windows XP" splash screen is what takes the most time when it actually loads windows. I know this is something not really related to the loading of Windows and more like a boot record issue with the harddrive or something. I fixed it before as I have said, I just forgot what I did. GRRRRR

The laptop is a Dell Inspiron 8200
2.4GHz P4
1G SODIMM
40G Harddrive
etc..etc..

The PC was working fine with the previous install of Windows XP SP2...same OS...same disk...etc..etc.. this has nothing to do with drivers...or spyware..or anything of that nature. The progress bar before the splash screen even takes 2 minutes to complete when you reboot in the beginning of a install of Windows, right after it copies the setup files and reboots for the first time.

Any help would be much appreciated.

I'm in the same boat. Just built my computer, fastest computer I've ever owned and it boots slower then any. Help someone!!