Pam,

Lots of computers doing what yours is doing.  Working fine one day.  Slower than molasses the next.  Very difficult to pinpoint exact startup program and/or service that cause(s) slowdown.  I assume you have adequate ram (512Mb) for XP SP2.  My suggestion would be to download Sandra 2007 Lite from Softpedia.  http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/System-Info/SiSoftware-Sandra.shtml . 

Sandra 2007 is an excellent program for analysing just what's going on.  This shareware version lacks the real punch of the Pro version, but it can definitely tell you what's eating up processor time.  Gives some good, common sense advice on how to tweak your system; i.e., use no wallpaper, no screensaver (use monitor power management instead). 

Try it.  May give you some clues as to your problem area.  Other programs out there such as registry cleaners that are easier to use but many of those can really put your system in Outer Mongolia.

Tony

Thanks Tony for the suggestion,

 I have 512 RAM, but not xp sp2, I never upgraded from sp1. I don't run wallpaper, or screensavers. I run I8kfangui, zonealarm, av, not much else. I'm not sure the processor is being hogged, necessarily, since I can launch excel, access, and other biggies immediately after rebooting, I just can't get internet explorer to open in less than 20 minutes. Then bingo, it pops open and runs perfectly. If I close it, then click to reopen, it takes a second to open. If I don't get this fixed, I may try your program. I'm just not anxious to install anything else.

Pam

Pam,

I understand your hestancy to install anything else.  Couple of other suggestions:

Open Internet Explorer.  Click on Tools|Internet Options.  Click on Advanced tab.  Scroll down to Security section.  Check "Empty Temporary Internet Files folder when browser is closed".  On General Page.  Click on Delete Cookies... and Delete Files... buttons.  When prompted, delete all offline content.  Click Clear History button also. 

Click on Start|All Programs|Accessories|System Tools|Disk Cleanup.  Check all boxes except the Compress old files (I personally don't like to compress files on my hard drive).

Couple of general performance improvements are to turn off Screensaver and use power management to turn off the monitor after a specified idle time.  Do not use fancy wallpaper or images( and particularly third party wallpaper programs such as Webshots).  If you use Microsoft screensaver, set it at 14 minutes or more.  Anything less, and Windows will end up polling the system every x minutes to see if the system is busy or not.  Causes real problems with certain printer drivers.  One customer couldn't understand why she could only print 3 invoices at a time on her HP Deskjet.

Screensaver was set at 1 minute.  Moved it to 2 minutes and she could print 6 invoices.  In other words, print 3 pages in a minute. Screensaver polled the system, cleared the print buffer. No more pages to print.  Printing done.

Also.  Press Ctrl-Alt-Del to bring up Task Manager.  Click on Processes tab.  Observe what processes are running while Internet Explorer is opening.  Had an eMachines T1090 the other day that was running a background AOL service left over from AOL 6 that had been uninstalled two years ago.

Let me know if you improve you system.  Would like to know what you find.

Tony