Slow boots ups, 4 tries to restart... etc. HELP

You can check out all my specs in my profile.
What's happening is whenever I restart my computer, it will boot up with normal speed all the way to where it starts loading my programs when windows starts to display the desktop, etc. It will load a few programs (out of about 8 total) and then just stop... and my computer will go real slow, it takes a really long time (if ever) to load any programs I manually open, etc. Therefore I restart again... then again... then again... and eventually everything will boot up normally and all will be well (until the next dreaded restart).
Lately it's taken 4+ times to boot up normally... but even when it does "normally" it's a bit slower than normal, but starts to get normal within 5-10 minutes.
In the past, about 3 months ago, after restarting dozens of times it never would be "normal", so I reformatted, and it still was screwed up. I switched which hard drive windows was on and then it was fine. Then, for experimentation, I switched windows BACK to my main hard drive, the 60 gig... and it was fine and normal as opposed to screwed up as before.
So, now it's starting to go slow again and I want to fix it (or find out what I have to replace) before I have to go through all of this again.

Sorry for the length, thanks tons for any help.

defragment?

stray programs?

virus?

check the "startup" folder?

check cpu usage?

no idea really...

edit:

I'd agree with backing up your data first.

oh yeah, Welcome!

Welcome to the Forums

From the sound of it, I think your 60 gig drive is going south on you. If I understood you correctly, it slowed down on you, you swapped to the 40 gig, it ran fine, then you reinstalled on the 60, and it was fine at first, but now slowing down again? I think the 60 is developing bad clusters. Fresh from a format, the bad clusters have probably been marked and not used, but as new ones develop, things slow down again.

I would go back to the 40, save everything, and then go to Maxtors site, and download and run their drive diagnostic software on the 60. Most likely it will fail, so be prepared to do an RMA.

Hey, i had the same exact problem
what I did was dump the drive.
it was only a 10 gig

I hadn't experienced that slow of a boot up since my 486 SX days