Boot problem

At boot time I am getting a message:
“smr gdf is not found. Autocheck cancelled.”
Then Welcome screen comes. At this point boot hangs often. Sometimes boot proceeds to show all icons on desktop but not as picture icons but as frames only. After one or more full shut downs the mashine finally start normally.
Disk full defrag helps for a couple days. Then the porblem comes back.
The computer is HP PC m7420n, 2G memory, 300G HD, XP Pro.
Please, any thoughts or suggestions.
Mike.