http://blogs.msdn.com/joelschoenberg/archive/2008/10/09/new-paper-answers-the-question-why-does-my-computer-take-so-long-to-boot-or-shutdown.aspxWell, maybe you should be using standby. But often people just don't want to use standby, whether it is a laptop with a small battery, or maybe a desktop that you want to eliminate all power being fed to the device. Check this paper from the Windows Fundamentalsen-USCommunityServer 2.1 SP1 (Build: 61025.2)http://blogs.msdn.com/joelschoenberg/archive/2008/10/09/new-paper-answers-the-question-why-does-my-computer-take-so-long-to-boot-or-shutdown.aspx#8993191Thu, 09 Oct 2008 22:28:08 GMT91d46819-8472-40ad-a661-2c78acb4018c:8993191summersfall<p>I've been thinking about using standby more often for my laptop. My older laptop takes forever to boot up but shuts down almost instantly. I think it's trying to retire itself.</p> http://blogs.msdn.com/joelschoenberg/archive/2008/10/09/new-paper-answers-the-question-why-does-my-computer-take-so-long-to-boot-or-shutdown.aspx#8995192Sat, 11 Oct 2008 03:51:37 GMT91d46819-8472-40ad-a661-2c78acb4018c:8995192JoelSchoenberg<p>Standby has been very useful for me, with the battery lasting a very long time. &nbsp;I have made it over a whole weekend with the laptop on standby and the power supply disconnected. &nbsp;</p> <p>The biggest risk in using standby is if you turn off the hibernate feature, which would mean that if the system neared the end of it's battery life, it could not enter Hibernate, therefore it would just forcefully power down and lose any content that you had not saved in the previous session. &nbsp;The ability to enter Hibernate directly from standby is called &quot;Hybrid Sleep&quot;.</p>