My Laptop running XP with SP2 is a bit rubbish at starting up and routinely takes 2 or 3 tries to get going. Occasionally (i.e. this morning) it really struggles and takes 10+ times. If you try starting it in Safe Mode, it doesn't always work (hangs when trying to load …Mup.sys – I googled this and people talked about BIOS and things I don't understand)

Now it's running, is there a way I can find out what's wrong with it? I don't think it's a virus or spyware but some other sort of problem.

"Buy an apple" isn't helpful advice, and I would if I had the spare cash!

It maybe because you have too much "rubbish" being loaded in the background.

Click on the start menu, click Run,then type in "msconfig".

This will bring up a window. Click on the start up tab, this will show all of the stuff that windows loads in the background. For instance Adobe Acrobat viewer kindly installs a widget that makes sure you have the latest version, you don't really need this.

Uncheck the items that are slowing your PC down, you may need to perform a little trial and error here. You could also do the same with the Services tab.

You do need to be careful as you could stop something loading like your anti-virus from loading.

Seems to be a lot better after that. Thanks mate