Help with Dell Inspiron 530!

Hey i have a Dell Inspirton 530. It a 2.2 dual core with 2 gigs of RAM and a 500 gb Hard drive. I recently had a power outage and now my computer takes a very long time to start up. I timed it at around 10 minutes total to do a start up. It freezes on the Dell logo screen for about 5 minutes, then it goes to the Vista loading screen and then to a black screen and stays that way for another 3-4 minutes. Then finally it takes me to the log in screen.

I've contacted Dell about the issue and the tech i talked to walked me through alot of basic things to fix it. Such as doing a complete power drain, and updating the bios. None of these things worked as it still takes 10 mins to start my system. Dell has told me they have no idea what is wrong as what they told me to do should have fixed the problem. They now believe it may be a minor hardware failure that will need to be replaced. Mentioned something about a capacitor going out. Have a buddy that's a computer geek and he said that capacitors can't go out.

So i'm basically stuck here with no idea what to do and no idea what's wrong with my computer. I've been told by Dell and friends that a simple power outage with no surges involved should not do this to a computer. So what should i do? if anyone can help me out i'd be very thankful.

The dell techs don't believe it's a software issue as the computer runs fine when it finally boots up. They said something about the hardware isn't turning over controll to the software quick enough. I don't know what else to try honestly.

Ok thanks for that i had no idea what a capacitor was on a computer. I'll take a look next time i shut down. But yeah i'm under warranty still so Dell said they would come and fix it.