I have a lovely old X41 in running XP Pro SP3 with 1.5 gig of RAM. X41s are known for slow booting, but a Windows update is supposed to have specifically addressed this already. Doing a Revo search, I see a great many IBM programs that I suspect might not be necessary, and the removal of which might help me solve my problem.
Please advise what info I need to supply here for my problem to be understood - and hopefully diagnosed. Many thanks to all.

What hard drive are you using?

I boot my X41 from a 16GB 400X CF card. My boot time is usually under five minutes, but not always.

Thanks, Bill - I'm assuming you're tongue-in-cheek with being pleased with a sub-5 minute boot time. But you're dead right in that I should have XP on a fast card, instead of this slow 1.8inch hard drive. I just fitted a V fast 32gig CF, which would do the job really well, if only I knew how to do it.
So, for starters, do you think I could image my XP with Easeus, then install it on the CF? Sounds way too easy.