Erratic Startup

My new Toshiba laptop Vista home premium has changed. Startup used to be
clean and quick. Now startup seems to be very slow and erratic....screen
flashing on and off, periods of black screen, slow startup. Has there been
an update that may have caused this change. Up to a few weeks ago I was
always impressed with how quick system came up from 'shutdown' mode. As an
aside how often or when should the computer be shutdown or is sleep/hibernate
the best normal practise?

Could you give us an idea of your system specs? Do you have Windows Live
OneCare or Norton Antivirus installed? What about cleaning out your
temporary files and doing a disk clean up, removing backup system restore
points? Have you installed an application that could have affected the
performance?
--
Andre
Blog: http://adacosta.spaces.live.com
My Vista Quickstart Guide:
http://adacosta.spaces.live.com/blog...3DB!9709.entry
"Beejaysoo" <> wrote in message
news:E0A34898-3339-4743-80B5-...
> My new Toshiba laptop Vista home premium has changed. Startup used to be
> clean and quick. Now startup seems to be very slow and erratic....screen
> flashing on and off, periods of black screen, slow startup. Has there
> been
> an update that may have caused this change. Up to a few weeks ago I was
> always impressed with how quick system came up from 'shutdown' mode. As an
> aside how often or when should the computer be shutdown or is
> sleep/hibernate
> the best normal practise?