I have a 24 in widescreen monitor and and when I load XP it's always in 640x480 after starting up and everything runs it's course it corrects itself back to 1600x1200.

but recently I installed some vista skins to make it look like vista and Vistart is loaded at startup but because it starts as 640x480 it messes it up after it converts it back to 1600x1200.

any ideas to fix this?

Every display adapter displays 640x480 in a basic mode (boot up) until drivers are loaded to make it work at it's full potential. This is why you see it "run it's course and correct itself back to 1600x1200." Windows has loaded the drivers for it ro run at it's potential within the Windows environment.

There are some "program (load) delay" tools available. A Google (or search of your choice) should turn up several available for download. You could use one of these to hold off loading the "pseudo Vista" until XP has finished the complete boot/drivers load.

Here's a start;
http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q=...ility+xp&meta=