I agree with Rick that you should run the Dell diagnostics.

I suspect that one reason the machine is taking forever to boot is the amount of RAM you have on board. Microsoft specifies 128MB as the minimum for XP but in reality using that amount of RAM you will be hitting your pagefile for most of the time.

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@DerekTrotter wrote:
Inspriron 8000, I did a clean install last week. XP 2 from scratch etc. All of a sudden I was getting some odd errors that the HD could not be found. That has now passed and the machine takes FOREVER to boot. When windows starts, i see my wallpaper but nothing else?

I can open my task manager but this only.

Help!

Celeron 600/128MB Ram/20GB HD>

Run Dell diagnostics on your hard drive immediately.

Because of the HD error which apparently cleared, there is an excellent chance your UDMA setting on the drive has been reset to PIO4(slow). It also may be failing as the other POSTers suggested.