You must have bad schmutz on your HD. From my XP Home, SP2, splash screen => desktop is 30 seconds. Reinstalling WinXP is probably the most time efficient thing you can do.
r-in, FWIW, I have been running the same combination, XP Pro SP2 on four Pentium4 machines for over a year now and have not had any issues with this setup. All these machines also have ZoneAlarm Pro installed. A fresh install is always a good idea. However, do make sure that you have downloaded the latest BIOS for your machine because some of the older Dell BIOS are not compatible with SP2. Good luck.
ktmexc20, What are you using for charts and broker inteface on your linux setup? I use Gentoo everywhere but have an XP 'puter solely for trading. --opm8
Once I think about switch to Linux, but I can't even found on Linux sites what version I need for my computer. Not to mention problems with drivers and OS installation. I also do have some programming knowledge and all my systems are developed on excel and vb and based on services, that also supports windows only. After all-can't see myself switch to Linux without spend significant amount of time to learn all about it, and learn about supported languages. It may take hell of time. Bottom line-advise to go with Linux may not be cure just for everyone. I believe windows is still much more user friendly.
make sure the upgrade did not change your startup settings. r click my computer,system properties,advanved,startup and recovery. change those settings to 5 seconds or less to speed it up.
How to perform a clean boot in Windows XP: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/310353/en-us?FR=1&PA=1&SD=HSCH
Hi opm, I program trade through IB, so I don't have a need for charts, only plots for data pre-processing purposes. btw, I run Gentoo too.
This is why my late father instilled on me to have a good backup / restore regime. He did a backup immediately after the "fresh install". Then whenever he needed to make modifications he would do a restore and then apply the changes. Afterwards make another backup. So even after using the machine one year the install is basically still "like it was installed yesterday" and there is no trouble going back. By the way I am running windows XP with SP2 and boot up time from the moment of pushing the switch until the moment I am logged in (entering password) is 42 seconds. Zone Alarm is a bit of a hit and miss piece of software, threw it out a long time ago. Using a good hardware firewall now and the simple Win XP SP2 one. Never had an issue. Maria
Same here... Zone Alarm is a bit of a hit and miss piece of software, threw it out a long time ago. Using a good hardware firewall now and the simple Win XP SP2 one. Never had an issue.
A have a similar problem. My computer takes 5 minutes to shutdown...not sure what i did, before it only took a few seconds..