I have a dell desktop that has the 2 gig hard drive almost full, maybe
a few thousand mb left.  I am running Windows XP with a P3 processor,
2.2 gb hard drive and 256 mb ram.  Whenever I shut the computer down
and restart it, it takes forever to start up and often once the
desktop is loading it freezes and requires a soft boot to start the
computer again.  This process of load, freeze and soft boot may go on
for 3 or 4 tries until the computer finally is usable.  I've run the
anti-virus, the anti-spyware stuff and nothing seems to help.  Any
suggestions as I am about ready to drop kick the computer and see if I
can bear the 63 yard field goal record.
thanks,
Shana

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Clarification of Question by rashad-ga on 27 Feb 2005 15:46 PST

I managed to clean out enough files and programs to be now have 1.2 gb
of free space. The suggestions below also alleviated the freezing desk
top problem.  What is taking so long is once it starts the POST and
the screen shows just the Dell logo before the initial beep, it sits
there for about 45 seconds to a minute, then beeps and loads the
desktop.

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Clarification of Question by rashad-ga on 27 Feb 2005 15:48 PST

The hard drive is a 10 gigabyte and when I look in the program files
and do a general assessment of those files and added up the rest of
what I thought would be the memory hogs and can't for the life of me
figure out how 8.5+ gig is being used by my computer.  Is there a way
to view where and how that memory is being used?

Go to start run msconfig a configuration utlity box will come up and
you will see a tab that says start. Select that tab and close any
programs that you don't need running when your computer first boots
up.

Or you can use this simply program. All you will have to do is go to
run programs and remove anything you don't need to run when your
computer boots up. Alot of times you will get programs that come on
like real player, quicktime and such that check for updates. Well
unless you actually need to update it constently, becuse it isnt
working then you don't need the update utility running when you boot
up. This program will only let you shut down what is safe to shut
down. But look at the files and see what they are before your remove
them becuse it will list your firewall in there.

It's free!! :D
http://www.codeforge.co.uk/

Get it running again, and take the steps at
www.theofficeexperts.com/cleanyourpc.htm

THEN do what david1977 says.

Also, a few thousand MBs is a few GBs, so your statement doesn't make sense. :(
Not sure WHAT you have left, but I have always recommended at least
20% free space, tho MS says something like 10%.

Can you clarify how much free memory you have?  As dreamboat said, it
doesn't add up.  A completely full hard drive can really mess things
up.