I had to reinstall windows XP Professional on my computer. However now everytime I boot up the pc there is a white bar with lines that VERY SLOWLY fill up when its a complete white bar the PC goes to the windows screen, etc. As a result my boot up time is extremely slow is there anyway I can stop this? Thanks in advance.

Hello, and Welcome to techhelpforum.

Did you reset your bios to factory defaults? It sounds like it may be a memory count/test.

It could be your cmos battery is dying/no longer holding a charge and the machine is reverting to factory defaults.

It also sounds like the progress bar you see when installing Windows. Does it go left to right, and is there anything saying "Microsoft" or "Windows" before or just after this bar?

Yeah it looks like the bar when you first install it for the first time. The normal booting up Windows screen appears afterwards. (Albeit a very long time). What do i need to do in Bios to change this? If the battery is dying what can I do?

"Yeah it looks like the bar when you first install it for the first time. The normal booting up Windows screen appears afterwards."

You may not have to do anything in the bios.

Right click on My Computer. Choose Properties. Click on the Advanced Tab. Click on Settings under Startup and Recovery. Click on the Edit button under System startup.

High-light and copy the entire text in the Notepad window that pops up. Close the Notepad window without changing anything.

Post the copied contents in your next post.

Ok This is what I was shown in notepad.
[boot loader]
timeout=5
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOW S
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Micro soft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect

It shows your XP Pro installation on partition 2. Is/was there another installation on partition 1, (the original XP installation?) or is that a "Factory Recovery" partition?

Thats the factory recovery partion. As a result its alot smaller.

Possibly a moot question, but to be sure and understand the progression of things, is that what you used to reinstall?

How old is this system (thus the cmos battery)?

If it's more than four years old it could be the battery. Thus, the machine will seek/load factory defaults at each power-on, thereby causing the (seek) delay.

Its almost 4 years. What can I do if the battery is the problem?

If the machine is a desktop, simply pop out the old battery and insert a new one. It's a silver disk about 3/4" in diameter, like a large watch battery. Most are CR-2032, but check yours to make sure. See photo.