I have a HP Laptop running Windows XP home edition. On start up the blue splash screen with the HP logo comes on and stays on for many seconds resulting in a slow startup. How would I go about getting rid of this startup screen.
Thank you

Two possible ways:
(1)Somewhere in the BIOS is a setting such as "quiet boot" or "boot time diagnostics screen". To get rid of the HP logo, you would disable the first type or enable the second.
I don't think this will shorten your startup time much though. The HP logo is simply covering the standard boot up diagnostics, such as checking the system RAM, locating your hardware,etc.
(2)Once Windows has booted, if you go to msconfig utility [click start-run and type in msconfig] and uncheck the line oemfonts.fon=vgaoem.fon [under system.ini tab], this should also remove the HP logo splash screen. Be sure to click apply, you will then be prompted to reboot.

dlwolff0: Thank you for the info, will give it a try.