Alright, Ive had this gateway laptop for exactly a year now..Not that old right? Well it started off only taking 5 seconds to turn on..but now it takes anywhere from 20 to a minute of holding down the on button..Is this something thats inside my hardrive, or just the button?

It's all in your mind.

You've probably just uploaded so much stuff to the memory that it's starting to affect the start-up time because it has to load so much than when you first got it.

Goto Start>Run
Type in msconfig.
Select 'Selective startup'
Goto the startup tab.
Uncheck everything that is not necessary for boot. (this crap is usually your tray icons) If you have norton AV, dont uncheck stuff that says 'nav' or 'cc'

next

goto your windows dir (usually C:\Windows or C:\Winnt) and open the 'Prefetch' folder.
Delete everything inside it.
Shut down and restart and enjoy.

You could also defrag, but fragmentation doesnt really bother an XP machine.

Ok thanks..That should save me a bunch of time..Most of the time after i lof on, i exit out of all of it..

aye this is a big problem with windows, you may also find viruses/trojan use startup sometimes to boot themselves up, so check it on a regular basis

Yeah, I had all these weird ones that were for internet rebates and stuff..

Lol..Sorry for double post, no one reading topic..Help again..Its doing it again! AHHH