Hard Disk Drive slowdown when booting :idea::idea::idea: :idea::idea: If, like I had , you have a 3min+ or slower boot time where Windows XP seems to sit for 2+ or so minutes with the XP logo doing nothing before everything comes to life, then do the following. Download Bootvis from www.microsoft.com or majorgeeks.com and run it the next time you boot. Do a 'Trace' If it shows a very long 'HDD initial' time of minutes rather than seconds then this is how to fix it. This example assumes you have 1 Hard drive on your primary IDE channel and a DVD-ROM(or CD) and CD-R on your two secondary IDE channels. Go to start > right click on my computer > click properties. Click Hardware > Device Manager. Go to IDE/ATAPI Controllers. Select primary channel. Right click properties. Click the Advance settings tab. Then on the device (0 or 1)that does not have 'device type' greyed out select 'disable' instead of 'autodetect'. This should stop windows trying to find a drive that isn't there. If you have your IDE channels set up differently simply repat the above for the secondary IDE channel settings. When I did this my boot time went from 3mins 20 to 35 seconds. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- SHUTDOWN XP FASTER 1) Start - Run - Regedit Navigate to the following Registry key: HKEY CURRENT USER\Control Panel\Desktop Double click on the AutoEndTasks entry and replace the 0 with a 1 in the Value data text box For the next two, if the dword value indicated does not exist, create it: Double click on the WaitToKillAppTimeout entry in the right pane and change the Value data to 2000 Double click on the HungAppTimeout entry in the right pane and change the Value data to 1000 Reboot If still having a problem, make the next change: 2) HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control Right-click on WaitToKillServiceTimeout and change it to 2000 NOTE: The lowest value Windows will recognize is 1000 (1 second) ADVISORY: While rare, the "WaitToKillService" tweak can cause problems. If an application is in the process of saving data and the associated service is stopped prematurely, the data will not be saved and may be lost. :idea::idea::idea: