delay after Welcome window

My neighbor's Laptop, an HP DV9500, shows a Black screen with only the mouse pointer visible after the Welcome screen at boot up. It remains in this Black screen for about 5 minutes at which time next to the mouse point the loading circle appears going around until the Desktop is loaded. What can I look at to find out why there is this delay after the Welcome screen and before the Desktop screen? Vista Home Premium is the OS. 2 GB RAM, 320 GB HDD.

As a first cut, download and install Soluto. During the Windows startup, there will be a tab in the lower right hand corner of the screen in which it will show the startup (and shutdown of services and processes. Look to see if one of them takes a long time to complete.

Does it do this in safe mode?

Also, try with a clean boot
How to troubleshoot a problem by performing a clean boot in Windows Vista or in Windows 7

Thank you all for your responses. I haven't seen my neighbor for the past few days and not sure if he is out of town. I will try your suggestions as soon as I have access to his Laptop. Sorry about that. I will post when I get the chance.

OK, finally had a chance to check out my neighbor's computer again. It worked great in Safe Mode. What finally cured the problem was running a program called Free Windows Registry Repair 2.6 at Free Window Registry Repair: a windows registry repair freeware. After running this program, the delay was no longer there. Thank you all for your responses.