When i boot into windows XP pro after logon i cannot use my PC for around a minute, the desktop is there but the hard disk is just grinding away and not much is happening. I cannot seem to do anything if i even try to open an explorer window it does nothing, i can't even get the task manager to open. After around a minute sometimes more the disk accessing stops and it then runs fine, as you can imagine this becomes very annoying, my machine only takes around 20 secs to get to the desktop from power up, but it just freezes when actually in windows. The problem seemed to appear after i uninstalled Zone Alarm Pro. Any help would be appreciated.

Uninstall ZoneAlarm and get yourself BlackICE or something. Zone Alarm tries to configure the active network interfaces, but they are not set up yet (u haven't connected anywhere). Alternatively try to give your network card a fixed IP address, so it won't take time to look it up from a DHCP server.

Since you uninstalled Zone Alarm, there may be some errant keys left in the registry that have not been dealt with. You might try some of the registry cleaners to see what the registry thinks is still installed. Be sure to backup your registry.

While this does not seem to be an issue with XP, Q263939 in the Microsoft database relates to slow hard disk performance for Win2k. Since XP builds on Win2k, this may be another lead.

thats not the issue. Go into the device manager, open up your primary and secondary ide controllers. In advance, deselect autodetection. you will se your start jump up to 20 - 30 secs.

btw zone alarm sucks. Why use a firewall anyway. software fw suck too, get a card with those capabilities