ok . two suggestions then
1) how big is your /windows/prefetch directory? A large cache here will slow down boot up times (look up prefetch on google if you want to understand why) - maybe system mechanic placed some stuff in here? I'm not saying that you should delete everything in here but maybe a bit of pruning?
2) have you used bootvis by MS? It might give you some clues as to where the boot problem lies. To be honest though 30-60 seconds to have everything log in isn't that long in XP - IIRC MS wanted to get XP to boot up in 30secs. Now MS will tell you that Bootvis is not meant to solve boot up problems for end users - which is true, but it might help you track down some problems. Bootvis is not available direct from MS any more so try here
http://www.majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=664
the planet mirror mirror site should be ok (at least it was when I tried it 5 mins before posting this)
See how that gets you going
