Some programmes are buggers to stop from loading at start-up. Real Player is one, and I've now ditched it. As you've found trying to dis-able them in MSCONFIG won't work. I ended up rooting through the program file for an update.exe and deleting it. Java will always check for updates, you have to go through the options to stop it, and every time you do install the latest version it resets itself, and you have to do it again!
It's worth checking the options or settings for every bit of software you have - there may be a "Run when Windows starts" checkbox you can untick.
My 3 year old Celeron 1.5Ghz laptop takes about 1 ½ minutes to fully boot, including Avast! antivirus and the Zone Alarm firewall. I'm fairly happy with that...