System is running slow

[bigfish26101]

Early October, I purchased a Dell XPS 600 and it seems they feel they don't need to help me. First off, I do not know a lot about computers or I wouldn't be posting here :D. Anyhow, my comupter boots up fine until windows (Windows XP Pro) starts. Once there, it seems I can't do much of anything for a good 2 minutes while I guess things are getting started. After that, my computer runs pretty good until time to shut down. When trying to shut down, I get several programs that don't turn off properly or at least I get asked several times if I want to End this taks now or wait. I ususally just hit End Now because it takes forever the other way. When I run Norton Internet Security, I get no spyware/adware but it does say I am protected against W32.Sober.X@mm (if that means anything to you). To me, my computer should not take that long to shut down. Something must not be working correct so I wanted to do a system restore. At first I thought about reinstalling windows but I think that is a last resort kind of thing. So I went to Dell's site and it tells me, "To perform a PC Restore of the operating system, press and hold Ctrl+F11 and release at the same time to access the Dell PC Restore Symantec Screen. Only when I press Ctrl+F11, nothing happens. I tried messing aroudn the Boot Menu (F12) but didn't seem to find anything. Basically, my question is 1) should I worry about my system not shutting down quickly and the programs not shutting down correctly? 2) is a PC Restore from the Symantec Screen what I want to do? 3) and if so, how do I do that? Thanks in advance for any help given....

[c_frank]

some steps that you could take are to defragment your computer and possibly add more ram if needed and disable some programs that start up with windows by going to: start,run,type in msconfig and click on the start up tab.

[bigfish26101]

well it says that Defrag is not needed and when I do, not much changes (especially the way it runs). It has 2 gigs of RAM and whenI go to the start up tab, I do not know enough about the programs to know which is what. There are a lot though.....is there a way to tell exactly what each program is? I tried to contact Dell and they said my warranty did not cover it because they believe it to be a software problem without even trying to figure it out. They said if I gave them 300 more dollars, they would be glad to assist me. It is safe to say I will not be dealing with Dell again being my computer was 3 weeks old when I contacted them. I downloaded spybot and adaware removal and it seemed to help a bit but it still shuts down slow. Thanks for the reply by the way, was starting to think I would not be answered. :D Any extra help would be much appreciated....