Update; Finally solved it. Here's what I found. One of the latest MS updates installed some new sound files. When Vista was shutdown the new shutdown theme would not allow taskeng.exe to close correctly. On the next startup taskeng.exe would run taking about 50% of the computers resources to right itself. This would go on for about an hour till taskeng.exe was satisfied and released it's hold on the resources. The fix was to disable the logon and logoff themes allowing taskeng.exe to close before shutdown. This was a perplexing problem but in the end it was just another case of a Microsoft update doing more damage than good.
The true test of character is not how much we
know how to do, but how we behave when we don't know what to do