Delaying some services can help. Not essential ones of course or connection services. You'd need to make these decisions based on your needs.
I recently purchased HP dv6449us laptop. It has dual, 1.6 Ghz AMD processors, 2 GB of RAM, and is an otherwise fine computer. However, the boot time for my system is deplorable. It can take anywhere from 3 - 10 minutes for my system to boot.
My startup items have been cut down to nothing more than my bare-minimum needs. I had temporarily fixed this problem by disabling Vista's "Superfetch" service: this reduced my boot time to under 1 minute. However, as of about a week ago, my startup process reverted back to its lengthy process. After displaying the Windows Icon, my laptop simply sits with a black screen for a long time. Hitting Ctrl-Alt-Del does bring up the task manager, but does nothing to tell me the state of my startup process.
Is there any reason for this to be happening all of a sudden? Is there anyway to get my boot-time back down, as waiting up to 10 minutes just to turn my computer on is not what I'm very keen on.

Chowhound
Comic Vine
GameFAQs
GameSpot
Giant Bomb
TechRepublic