Vista - Vista boot times

I've had Vista x64 installed for about 2 full months now and I've recently begun having a **** ton of problems. One being:



187 seconds. What the ****.

Before you ask, here are my specs. Lots of fast memory, a fast processor, 7200RPM boot drive (not listed), and ****ing awful performance. What gets me is that the delayed boot time is before I even see the "Welcome" screen.

My current boot time distribution:
1. BIOS does all its fancy stuff very quickly (about 6-7 seconds or so)
2. I get to my boot loader and it defaults to Vista after 5 seconds (dual-booting Vista/Ubuntu).
3. I then see the Vista loading screen (black screen with green loading bar) for about 4-5 seconds.
4. SIT AT COMPLETELY BLACK SCREEN FOR 160 SECONDS.
5. Welcome screen/load Startup apps (takes 10 seconds or so)

Naturally I tried doing a Safe boot to compare times. Unfortunately, they are similar. It hangs after loading all of the necessary Windows files and simply says something like "Loading..." for the 100+ seconds.

Additional Notes:
1. Windows Restore is completely disabled. This is having no impact on my boot times.
2. This hasn't always been happening. It's just something that has occurred in the past two weeks. The only major impact that I can think of on my system has been installing some VMs with VMWare Workstation.
3. I've tried disabling Vista's TMM (multiple monitor crap) but it didn't help.
4. I'm using a WDC2500 HD which has been known to impact the boot times of Vista. However, Vista has always been installed on this drive and didn't give me any problems for the first month and a half.

Any suggestions?

sorry mods for replying to this thread, but its quite annoying the AMOUNT of threads that go unanswered or just left ignored.