WINDOWS itself runs perfectly. You can get XP installed out of the box and it will NEVER EVER hang. 99.9% of all problems on a Windows desktop are caused by poorly written applications, bad hardware, user errors and insuffucient protection against spyware and virus infected files. There is just too much junk out there in application land, just as there is too much crappy hardware.

I can expect an XP box to run perfectly for years without crashing (in fact, I have one machine here that has been up for 4 years now without a single non-natural reboot. It was rebooted a 2 or 3 times only to install a service pack or to move it. This machine was turned on, had an application installed and is still running perfectly.

As for Linux; For the server market Linux is perfect, I run a server farm with it and it never lets me down, but the whole lie that it is a good alternative for the desktop just never seems to go away. We've been hearing for years that it will take over the desktop market, and it just doesn't. Even massive firms like Corel and Novell have not managed to make a dent in the desktop market. I mean, how many people do you know run Linspire at home on their desktop?

The fact that windows allows the spyware and viruses, it
cant be considered a good OS.
And it lets a poorly written application to cause a problem to
the entire system.

I need to use XP (corportate policies) but if I had my way, I would
stick to Mac OS (for the ease) or linux for the notebook/desktop.

profiles and system services
 

I find, that there are just so many system services that load, normally that it takes a while to load regardless.

So, I setup a couple of profiles, one very light profile, and one with some services that I might need for remote access, or other external devices (ipod, etc.) and then one will just about everything the system wants.

The other big killer, is moving a "work" laptop between locations. The network configuration which loads up early, really doesn't like moving between locations. There is nothing one can do to speed this up, it just has to work itself out. This will be found when working with a laptop per se at work, everything seems to boot fine, time and time again.

disconnect, and go home, and it takes forever for the network location to resolve itself. tihs is only for laptop that are in a workgroup/domain situation.

Take it back to WORK and it takes forever again, but then is fine while at work.

I shutdown a bunch of services that are not needed, and try to get the initial load to about 20 or so. then, bootup time is very fast indeed.

Note that I highlighted a bit of your post. That's the key to reliably running any OS. I run Solaris, XP 64, Linux (Red Hat), Vista 64 beta at home and have run many others over the years (AIX, HP/UX, DEC...). There is no single OS that is light years ahead of the others for varied computing needs, so nobody should feel smug about running a certain OS.

The key is to know what you're doing and stick with the set up that works for what you're trying to accomplish. I am writing this on a box running XP64 that's been up for....oh let me look..... 6.5 mos. I rebooted Feb 13 when I loaded a new BIOS update. My Firefox browser is fairly stable but I'll be moving to IE7 at the gold release for XP64. Under XP32 I like Opera and Firefox. Under Linux I like Opera. My Solaris box hasn't been rebooted since Dec '05 (I was playing with leaning down drivers then.)

In regards to the speeding up of startup of XP, BootVis is an excellent recommendation.

start from scratch. backup your personal files then reformat and install windows, drivers, and apps. sure its tedious and could take hours or days but you'll notice the improvement immediately.

i too agree the only surefire way to dramatically affect a deteriorated boot time is to reformat/reinstall. however, since many people customize their PCs, it's not always practical.
i've recently doubled my notebook's RAM to over 1Gb and it did nothing to my boot time whatsoever. it has however paid dividends in other ways.

Good or bad, it dominates the market, and it doesn't seem like anything is ever going to come close to biting away at its market share, Apple has tried since 1983 and hasn't gotten far, IBM tried for years, Next tried, BeOS tried, many Linux flovors tried and all they all failed. We need to face it; Windows is here to stay. Vista will be another huge success for Microsoft.

What I'll do once a week is pop into my startup folder and run entry in my registry and remove everything I don't want, then I'll check my services for unwanted crap. I'll also head into add/remove programs and remove anything I forgot to remove.

Instead of running msconfig, there is a better option if you have Windows Defender. Open it, and under Tools, choose Software Explorer. This will give you the same option to stop programs from running at startup, but provides much more information.

If you are an experienced Windows user, I recommend Registry First Aid and Registry Compressor

You wouldn't believe how much crud I find in folks' registries when I clean them up. Fragmentation of 40%+ and that slows start up like running a F1 car through mud.