Long boot up time with Vista

Question

I have a Gateway running Vista Home Premium. It has a Quad core Q6600
and 3 gigs of memory. Start up time was normal until I added my networked Xerox Phase 6360 using latest drivers and an external USB WD500 hard drive. The time from the Gateway logo to the initial startup of Vista went from a few seconds to 6-7 minutes. Vista bootup from then on is the same. I have tried disconnecting both and it does't seem to help or revert to a normal startup. What happened and is there anything I can do to fix problem. Gateway tells me the only fix is a re-install of OS. The only software I have put on machine thusfar is Microsoft Home office, Corel X3 with Vista update, and Adobe Photoshp 6.0. I would appreciate any help in fixing or trouble shooting this problem. Thanks