very slow boot

my computer has started to take 7 or 8 mins to boot up,and then runs slowly with the hard drive grinding continually, any help is much appreciated

pentium 2.2
256 mb ram
80gig h/d

 

Three or more possible things:

You're low on RAM
You're Hard Drive is badly fragmented
You have too many things starting up

All the above

Download a program called Ad-Aware from here: http://download.com.com/3000-2144-10045910.html?part=69274&subj=dlpage&tag=button

Reboot

Then, go to start > run > msconfig > startup

Under the command header it will tell you where every file points. Try removing the tick from every box that ISN'T related to anti-virus/firewalls/broadband.
If in doubt, post the list here.

Good luck

 

Do a scandisk as well and have it check for errors and/or bad sectors