Thanks for your reply
Yes I have cut out as many start up items as I dare but to no avail something is bogging the system down somewhere but it's not obvious what it is. It took me a couple of days to find out that a driver which wasn't loading was a remnant of a previous firewall (the programmers even made the drivers hidden just to make life more fun

)
I tried running Bootvis - but it didn't give me any clues - it might someone with more experience - but I couldnt spot the hold up.
Anymore ideas anyone please
Den