According to Microsoft, Windows XP was designed to boot up within about 30 seconds. Add several additional services and that can become a minute. You can probably slush it but not much. It depends on how much additional functionally you want to be included. If you need multiple services enabled (for example Services for Unix) you might need probably up to two minutes. time also depends of speed of your CPU and speed of hard drive. From 2GHz dual core CPU with 2G of RAM and 7200 RPM harddrive you can expect 30 sec boot in most cases.
Slow start and shutdown can be a symptom of Spyware infection or bloated configuration or both. In rare cases it also can be connected with device sharing problems (for example network drive not available).
Amount of RAM also is important. Generally Windows XP is not running that good on 256M PC and Windows 2000 here has an edge. Windows XP is definitely more resource hungry and on 256K PC it feels slower then Windows 2000. 512K are usually OK and if you have 2G only small amount of this memory is used unless you run some very memory hungry applications. Probably 1G is a good compromise between cost and speed for modern desktops and laptops with XP. You generally do not need 2G for XP and can save money.
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