Hi,

> Are device drivers still loaded, even if the device is disabled?

Not if disabled.

> If so, would creating a hardware profile of just the essential hardware
> restrict the devices loaded?

It would, but simply disabling them should be sufficient.

> Alternatively, is there a way of stepping through driver loading during
> bootup? (I seem to remember being able to do this in W95, though I could
> be hallucinating...)

I miss that confirmation boot (Win95/98), it was a nice way to troubleshoot
a driver related startup problem.

Things work better in Safe mode as your are not loading full driver sets,
just basic functionality. The problems can be twofold. A full driver set may
be corrupt, or could be in conflict with other drivers. Start by disabling
unneeded devices, then by reverting back to base drivers (standard VGA,
101/102 keyboard, etc.).

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP
http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/
Associate Expert - WindowsXP Expert Zone
www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/expertzone
Windows help - www.rickrogers.org

"bhd" <bhd@hmail.com> wrote in message
news:1135886499.50930.0@demeter.uk.clara.net...
> Hi,
>
> I'm trying to troubleshoot a slow startup problem, and have been through
> all the standard procedures (anti-virus, spyware, msconfig, selective
> disabling of services and startup processes etc etc), and have established
> that the only way to reduce boot time is to start in safe mode. From
> this I concluded that the time is being taken loading device drivers, so
> tried disabling as many hardware devices as I could in device manager and
> rebooting - still no change to normal boot time.
>
>
> Thanks in advance,
> bhd.
>
>
>
>