Help: Windows XP SP2 slow startup all of a sudden

[Buccaneer]

I have been using XP SP2 for a while now and just this morning, it taking about 90 seconds to get into windows. Normally it has taken about 15 seconds. The place where it hangs for 70 seconds is the Windows XP splash screen with the blue status bar. I ran scan disk using PowerMax, defrag is ok, checked for viruses and spyware and ran bootvis (it shows a long bar on drivers but no specific processes going on). A check of the system processes shows nothing unusual and CPU performance is as it should be. What is happening all of a sudden? Is my hard drive failing? Or is something else going on?