BLACK SCREEN of death?

So I'm assuming this is the wrong forum to post this? If that is the case please point me in the right direction and accept my appology. I don't have a "blue screen of death" but rather a "black" screen of idle time of who knows how long these days. This is my problem if it doesn't apply to this help forum tell me where to post it at and upon knowing the right place I will elaborate on the issue. Running Windows Home Premium (x64), on a hp laptop G72 about 3 gigs of RAM, 320 gig hard drive, pentium dual core t4500 at 2.3 ghz and basics installed to keep laptop simple (have more info once i'm in forum I need to be). I start up the laptop it boots fine from what I can hear, Windows animated start op orb does what it does normally, brings me to the log in screen where I have 3 accounts to choose from (2 admin and 1 standard) I log in under my account which is a admin account and then I get a black screen with a movable cursor for what seems like forever! Realistically it's about 3 minutes??? Guessing. Then when it finally does move on from the screen I get normal settings on what is my normal desktop, however it lags bad. takes forever for that crappy hp wireless assistant to turn on. It's getting annoying! I have a past Microcomputer Degree but I bought a PC years back preinstalled with Vista, and hated it and never kept up on OS from vista on out. So I know it's not normal, but this day and age and being out of tune...I need some help please. thanks

thanks "DOC"! I did as you said but upon opening msconfig....WOW there is a lot of stuff going on and I can't be sure what it all is. There anyway to save all that to a text file to post and see if someone can tell me what is safe to get rid of and what I should keep? There is also 5 tabs in msconfig...Dont know which one you are talking about ending things that don't need to be going on in?