Does it not annoy you when you ask a question and the only answer you get is upgrade to Windows 7, some people will go as far as saying buy a new PC, but it’s an answer you need NOW, nor when you have got Windows 7, it’s so frustrating when you asked a question and people say upgrade to windows 7, they forget to mention that if you do upgrade to windows 7 it’s a RTM or BETA version that may stop working after the official release date of windows 7 or at best by January next year. WHAT YOU NEED IS AN ANSWER TO YOUR QUESTION and HERE IT IS.
Before I give you possible solutions and before you try them out, make sure you have a system restore or full system backup just-in-case.
OK, there is a number of factors that could be causing the boot time problems, simply removing start-up entries will not solve the problem, basically the freezing on the black screen is caused by your boot sector\boot script & windows trying to initialize services & drivers at post which have become corrupt, this is caused by a bad driver, or a unclean installation of windows (this problem usually occurs with pirated, unattended N-Lite version of windows or upgraded versions of windows which was not done from BIOS) as we cannot determine if you had the problems soon after you installed your windows OS we cannot say if it is that, but there is a number of solutions, the best one I have found with this is to create a new boot file, re-writing the original boot script as it should be from the windows CD, this can be done by booting into your windows installation CD, then rather than re-formatting, go to the repair option\console, there should be a option that says check for problems, click it, and let windows detect if there are any problems with the partition or boot sector, if they are problems it will fix them automatically. Restart and hopefully your freezing should have gone, if it did not find any problems then you need to back into the repair console and go into MS-DOS\command prompt mode and type HELP, there will be codes to type in, one of which is an option to delete the boot script, delete it, then create a new one, you MUST create a new boot script from command prompt console before you restart your PC, if you restart your PC, you will lose the lot so be very careful. it’s all in the command prompt section of windows repair, it’s quite technical and you have to be very careful but this is the ideal solution, some people say it’s due to an overhead of programs but they are all wrong because you already pointed out the only items you have are CCC and anti-virus, it’s not CCC and its not anti-virus, so basically it’s not the programs so forget that.
It could be caused by your ATI driver, try re-installing that, if not, then forget that.
It’s not the number of cores you have neither from the previous post, if this was wrong your PC would not have booted at all let alone freeze, but fair comment yes you can choose the number of cores and the amount of memory but this is not the problem, the problem is caused by either a service, a driver or a mix of both.
other possible solutions, services, I trust you know where the services are in admin tools in control panel, if so go there, disable superfetch immediately, a lot of problems are caused by this terrible service, if you ever wondered why you hard drive takes around 10 minutes to stop spinning after you have booted up this is WHY Superfetch, which is not super at all, believe me I know, superfetch loads programs into memory based on how many times you use them, so basically it loads lots of lots of programs into memory so executing them is quicker, the trouble is of course, is that after time its gets clogged up and loads programs into your memory that you use rarely, and from in-depth experience of this service, YES it loads programs quicker, but 2-4 seconds quicker at the max, and it causes your hard drive to constantly spin and churn, disable it or at least set it to manual.
services creates an immense amount of problems with windows users and you need to set a lot of them to manual, find a good quality services tweak guide, or best still Google: black vipers services tweak guide into Google and get reading and sort it out, and the services could be causing your boot time problems.
Other Solutions: take out all USB hardware when booting, only have mouse and keyboard present, see if that is the problem.
Check your partitions, using a program such as Acronis disc director, and see if they are any additional partitions that should not be there, especially FAT32 partitions, a MAJOR problem with a lot of high street PCs, is that the store doesn’t give you the original windows disc. Your PC as a restore backup on another partition, and 90% of the time it’s a FAT32 partition DELL are the worst for this, not giving you the windows disc just a so-called restore CD, which simply reverts everything back to factory settings as it was built, this is useless and problematic and could be causing the problem because the boot script as both FAT32 and NTFS codes embedded which has become corrupt after windows updates and is nor freezing your PC, DELETE any FAT32 partitions, residue space on original hard drive and if you are having a partition make sure it is NTFS and is a logical not a primary.
Download a decent Trojan checker and check for root kit Trojans, a Trojan horse is possible, try using spybot, and get a high quality Trojan checker and get it to do a check for Trojans, to check for root kit viruses use unhackme, you can download a trial version from their homepage, the trial will do to check for Trojans and root kit viruses.
Clean Your Registry, Clean Up Temp Files, Delete All Old System Restore Data (No Point having system restore if your PC is corrupt), once system restore data is deleted, create a fresh system restore if you really must use this newbie feature, oh yes, restart the ready boost service, clear event viewer log files etc.
Use a program that will delete and rebuild your page file or disable it temporary and re-build it yourself after next boot.
FINAL SOLUTION if all as not worked: Re-Format with a legit version of Windows Vista or a decent Trojan free pirated version, if you want to go Windows 7 wait till the official release date, Windows 7 is great, tests prove it, but wait until the official release date, for now use Vista SP2 teak it up, do not use all the newbie features, disable file sharing, system restore and all that nonsense if you a 1 guy PC user and do not have a network, set some services to manual (check tweak guide), use vista manager to tweak it up, do not have more than 2 partitions, 2nd hard drive is better.
Hope that Helps Mate and I Wish you all the best with your boot time problems, trust me I’ve been there, had that and fixed it.
HOW DID I FIX IT the 60 second boot-up freeze? DID I?
Clean Registry & Temp Files: Yes fixed it only partially.
Did Resetting Services Fix it: Nope.
Did Re-Installing Drivers for all major hardware fix it: Nope.
Did Deleting & Disabling start-up entries fix it: Nope.
Did booting from the windows CD into repair console fix it, after deleting old boot sector file and creating a new one fix it: YES IT DID and I no longer had to wait for a 60 second freeze, I was in windows within 10.
Hope this helps, its a long reply but at least you have an answer now. Good Luck & All The Best.
Anyone know how to improve vista's boot time? 
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