Windows xp slow to open startup programs

[jtchinoy]

Hey guys,
Well my problem started about 6 days ago.
One day I hooked up a 2nd HDD and after that, most of the startup programs started taking a good 5 minutes to start after windows boots up. Asus wifi-ap solo, rivatuner, and my firewall detection protocol for windows take about 5 minutes to start. Trying to use any of the programs that take any sort of notable processing power will freeze. I tried opening windows media player and it would freeze until the listed startup programs start. Trying to manually open Asus and rivatuner prove futile and do nothing. No errors come up either and it runs just fine after the programs finally start.
I ran spybot s&d, microsoft malware detection program, avira full system scan, defragmented my computer, and did a disk cleanup. I even tried unplugging the 2nd HDD and that didn't do anything neither.
I'm officially out of ideas now, what else could be wrong with it?
I installed Service Pack 3 yesterday, and that didn't solve anything neither.

 

[auscanzukus]

What's the specs of mobo & hdds? SATA/IDE?

Have you gone to bios to verify that the hdds show up in standard cmos features or the 1st submenu?

Does it say next to "verifying DMI pool data........update success" at the end of POST?

 

[jtchinoy]

It's a p5k-e wifi/ap motherboard.
The HDD's are a 250gb for the main, and the one I just put in is a 160gb. They're both SATA.
I'll go into my bios to check.

 

[jtchinoy]

It posts too fast for me to see if it says DMA update succeeded.
In the first menu for my BIOS, both SATA drives are detected. Both SATA HDD had multiword DMA-2 and atapi DMA-5 and SMART monitoring compatible. Not sure if those are relevant.
Both SATA ports used by my HDD aren't on enhanced mode; whatever that is.

 

[auscanzukus]

Not too fast, turn off the POST splash/gfx screen if present. Stare at the bottom of the screen when the pc posts & tap F8. If you miss it, reset pc from the safe mode selection screen until you see the last line.

 

[jtchinoy]

How do I turn off the splash screen?
I decided to try to restore my computer to last week and that seems to have fixed the problem at the moment.
The only program that was uninstalled from the restore was my blackberry software. Maybe the blackberry software messed up my registry?

 

[auscanzukus]

go to bios, boot, boot..., disable "full screen logo".