Long boot up

Have a system here it is an older AT M/B running Win98SE. Upon boot or restart the screen stops at the bios configuration screen for a long time (45seconds or so) with the line Starting Windows 98...... There is a way to shorten this isn't there? There is no HD activity at this time and device manager looks good and I have stopped the 3 dozen programs that were starting through MSCONFIG. I looked through BIOS and don't see a setting anywhere in there that seems to fit this annoyance. This computer did have problems before but I beleive I have resolved those problems....typical tons of programs on start up!

...an older AT mobo, huh?

How much RAM? Probably not more than 8MB...maybe 16MB? While Win98 will run with 8MB, it will be extremely slow.

Same with going through the BIOS configuration routine/screen. This will just take a long time with an old AT. You might check for latest BIOS/CMOS version/update for your mobo.

Sorry I couldn't help out more...but these old monsters will typically take a long time to go through the motions.

How many fonts are loading?

Another thing to check is network adaptors - modems included...if it was installed and removed without being uninstalled, windows still looks for a response from it and waits for the response or a timeout before it will continue booting.

The basics maybe? Full Sandisk, Defrag and a DOS scanreg /fix to top it off????