xp loading

after the windows xp boot screen (which strangely doesnt say "professional", as i thought it used to) my screen turns black for about 30 seconds, during which time the hard drive isnt being accessed at all. then suddenly the desktop starts to appear and the hard drive starts being accessed again. is there a way to diagnose this problem, and figure out what my computer is doing while the screen is black?

thanks...

Is this after logon then?

Sounds like a service or process is trying to start, but has a problem, and the rest of the system is waiting for it to timeout before fully loading.

You might want to look here:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308041

And if it is after logon that you have this pause, it is likely something in these registry fields:

# HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows\Run
# HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run
# HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnce

I would check the event viewer first to see if it lists any services which are having errors at startup.

When you install SP2 it removes the Professional tag. Check to see if there are any windows updates.

i just updated. and i dont use accounts, so i dont know whether its before or after...

do you have a network adapter? It could be the DHCP trying to get an adress although from my expirience the network service is only started after windows desktop has loaded...