Laptop taking ages to boot up

I have a friends Dell Inspiron 6000 which is taking ages to get off the windows xp screen and start the system.It was full of spyware/adware and other dross.Avg Anti-Spyware;Spybot search and destroy are now giving me the all clear.When it gets to the desktop it flies along.The problem is getting to that point!! I ran system mechanic7 which improved things considerably but the problem really seems to be getting/finding the os.I went to the set up menu thinking fast boot wasn't enabled but unfortunately it is enabled.Any suggestions guys and gals??

Go to start,run,msconfig and then the startup option and see if theres anything funny there.

Thanks jimmyd for your reply but no joy with msconfig.The problem is before windows starts,its like its having difficulty finding the os. On the windows xp screen the three little blue squares that travel from left to right keep stopping and then moving really slowly until eventually the xp screen dissappears and I then make it to the user accounts(welcome screen). Once I click on an account everything goes ok.

even if your out of waranty your meant to have lifetime telephone support with dell so might be worth giving them a tinkle!

thanks everyone.I took the easy route and did a full system restore after saving everything on an external hd.Normal service has been resumed!!

just for future ref, your virus checker was probably doing a complete scan before letting bootup continue