Did you remember to defrag the Windows hard drive after running all the updates
and scans and registry fixes first?

At least there are other Linux Netbook Distros to try that may be faster.

My netbook boots in under 35 seconds, so your situation is not the norm. It
should boot in less than a minute. When it takes a long time to boot then it
might be checking drives for errors using fsck. Since you are in a graphical
boot then you are not likely to see what it is doing. I would try a text
boot to watch the boot process to see what is going on. At the grub boot
loader press F6 and then in the bottom remove the words quiet splash. Then
press whatever it says at the bottom in the message portion to boot. I think
that it is b but right now am drawing a blank.

As it boots look for any delays and report back what you are seeing.

Hitting F6 doesn't do anything but get rid of the countdown line at the bottom
of the menu in Grub. It doesn't even get to the screen that I posted up earlier
in this thread. All I have is a blinking cursor at the top right.

BTW, after doing all the Ubuntu updates and installs, it's taking alot longer
than minutes to boot up.

Something is seriously wrong. I would consider a re-installation. Just
backup and try again. I know that this sounds drastic, but it only takes a
few minutes provided that you have not customised your installation too
much.

Yeah they were both generic installs.

I just picked up the latest Linux Format magazine and it just so happens to have
a main article on dual booting! I'll be reading that and trying out my new DVD
drive for my netbook. What could possibly go wrong after doing that?

I did a complete reinstall. Giving Win7 40GB, and Unbuntu 30GB with a 10GB
swapfile. I didn't know what size the swapfile should be, so I just made it
10GB. Followed the steps in the article, that were basically the same as what
was online, and still it's taking 5-6 minutes to boot up to Ubuntu. Both OS are
completely up to date.

I'm so disillusioned.

I guess what I'm going to do is just install each OS separately and just wipe
the HD clean after trying each one out.

I don't know what the problem is but I can assure you it isn't normal.
I have had many dual boot systems and once they get past the initial
grub menu each operating system boots up in a reasonable minute or
two. Mind you, I'm still using Windows XP Pro and will never upgrade
from that as I intend to go 100% with Kubuntu at some point.

Swapfiles should be no more than twice the size of the amount of RAM
you have installed. I usually use only the same size as RAM. Most of
my systems are AMD or Intel running at 2 to 2.6 GHz with 2 MB of RAM
and all are from 2 to 6 years old. There must be something unusual in
your hardware for it to take so long. Do you have adequate RAM and a
CPU that runs in the several MHz range?

His problem could be the size of the swap file. It could be loading into a
RAM disk with a swap file that large. I would delete the swap file
altogether and see if it helps. He can get along without one and then if he
finds that it improves things he can make a more modest one. To delete the
swap file is the partition manager to format it as FAT32 or something other
than swap. He should work from Windows or the Live CD.

OK today I just wiped the HD and installed netbook Ubuntu via their page here,
http://www.ubuntu.com/netbook/get-ubuntu/download
So the only OS is Ubuntu. The install went fine as did the updates. I just let
it use the whole HD. Now it takes over 8 minutes for it to boot up! I even
used an online stop watch to confirm my estimates. The install made it's own
swapfile. BTW, there's 2GB of ram on this and the bios is updated to 1.50,
which is the latest. And no there's no settings for changing the speed on the
processor, but there was a setting for performance or battery, and it was set at
performance.

I've asked around in a couple of other forums regarding this. It matters what
people suggest, but I think the next step is to try a few other flavors of Linux
and see what happens.

The swap disk should be no bigger than 4 GBs for your system and I would
actually go for 2 GBs to equal your RAM as swap space is way over rated,
IMO. So you had way too much swap to begin with (and probably still have)
which is likely your problem. Since you would have to physically (and
consciously) remove the old swap partition and if you have not done so, then
it probably still exists and you may be compounding your problems. Ubuntu
will use whatever swap space is designated as such and this includes more
than one swap space.

Wiping out the hard disk will NOT resolve your problem. You need to delete
partitions that are set aside for swap or reformat them at the very least
(the easiest solution) using the Partition Manager in Ubuntu. Once done
reboot and you should find a leaner and better system.

When I installed Ubuntu the last time, (current install), I deleted all the
partitions and let the system make it's own swapfile. It ended up making a
6.2GB swapfile on a HD that is 160GB with only Ubuntu on it. I'm not going to
worry about changing that cause it's not that important to me.

I did manage to get the problem resolved on a Ubuntu forum here,
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1528366
I'm not exactly sure how it got resolved, but it did. You can read about it on
the thread if you haven't already.