Your BIOS for Faster Startups"

When you turn on your PC, it goes through a set of startup procedures in its
BIOS before it gets to starting XP. So, if you speed up those initial startup
procedures, you’ll make your system start faster.
You can speed up your startup procedures by changing the BIOS with the
built-in setup utility. How you run this utility varies from PC to PC, but you
typically get to it by pressing the Delete, F1, or F10 keys during startup.
You’ll come to a menu with a variety of choices. Here are the choices to
make for faster system startups:
Quick Power On Self Test (POST)
When you choose this option, your system runs an abbreviated POST
rather than the normal, lengthy one.
Boot Up Floppy Seek
Disable this option. When it’s enabled, your system spends a few extra
seconds looking for your floppy drive—a relatively pointless procedure,
especially considering how infrequently you use your floppy drive.
Boot Delay
Some systems let you delay booting after you turn on your PC so that
your hard drive gets a chance to start spinning before bootup. Most
likely, you don’t need to have this boot delay, so turn it off. If you run
into problems, however, you can turn it back on.