HDD slow, startups are killing me..

I just bought a new computer C2D E6420, 2GB 800mhz ram, radeon x1950xt etc.... it's all great, and it runs fast. But certain things like windows startup, firefox startup, and just running certain things where it has to access the HDD are extremely slow. I'm using a HDD from another computer. It's a decent Western Digital as i found out when I was looking at it, but when i had bought that computer it came with, it never seemed so slow.

What's slowing it down so much? It takes about 5 minutes to start up windows, I've checked the cpu usage and it's only using about 10-20% with 1.56gb of ram free. Of course I've defragged. It seems like when I'm loading windows and things it just sits and doesn't do much.

Try getting www.ccleaner.com clean that registry, get rid of junk, and it has a tool that removes start up programs, which is stronger than msconfig, because some programs can bypass it like msn. Also don't forget your friendly disk defragmenter.MondoCool

You're best bet is to disable any uneeded programs from your start-up list. Should make it boot faster. Like Mondo said.

I always have junk disabled. I'll try the registry cleaner now that someone has suggested a good one, but i never mess with them cause they have messed me up in the past.

Also just to throw this in there, loading screens seem much slower than i had hoped for this new system, but when it actually loads it plays great. WoW plays good, but it's actually the worst playing game I hve right now. I run BF2142 with all settings enabled better than i do WoW right now with all of it enabled. I also think BF has a bit of AA and AF on too. The only reason i can think of for that is that WoW streams from the hard drive more and has no loading screens. It has nothing to do with this post, but I am very disappointed by the performance of F.E.A.R. compared to other games. I would think a game that's older like it is would play better and look better, but it just doesn't look so great even with the settings as high as they go, and the frames suffer. Half Life 2 totally blows it out of the water in gfx and performance and it's a lot older. Could be that I'm using Ati.

to the guy that asked, I don't think it's an older model HDD. I bought this computer in 05, all I can tell from the back of the HDD without checking serial numbers and all is "Western Digital Enhanced IDE Hard Disk Drive"