Booting slowed down after some hotfix or SP2

[Lalo]

A bit of background.
I have previously installed winxp, then installed sp1 and,
through automatic updates, kept my machine updated. In the
mean time, after some update, when you boot, the pc didn't
respond for 30/45 seconds. I mean, after the taskbar and
the desktop load, if you double click an app or start a
dial-up connection, it do nothing. After those seconds,
all the apps you tried to start work perfectly, and the
system runs smoothly with no performance problems.
I thought it was because I have installed McAfee firewall,
but apparently it wasn't.
After a clean install of windows xp pro sp1, the system
works fine. Then I installed sp2, the problem started
again.
I tried to deactivate win firewall, and even security
center, but it didn't work.
Then run msconfig and choose tu run in diagnostic mode.
The system works fine

Up to now, I'm pretty sure it is some of the hotfixes that
sp2 installs. But don't know which one.

Any clue about this problem???

 

[Guest]

I will try them.

Just to add: during the seconds, it showed no disk
activity and CPU was 99% free.

 

[Lalo]

And as I said before, it was a clean install.
I don't think it should be necesary to clean Inet files,
spyware or virus.
Event viewer doesn't point anything but info.

 

[Alex Nichol]

I have previously installed winxp, then installed sp1 and,
through automatic updates, kept my machine updated. In the
mean time, after some update, when you boot, the pc didn't
respond for 30/45 seconds. I mean, after the taskbar and
the desktop load, if you double click an app or start a
dial-up connection,

It may be made worse by some software you have added to run at startup;
a Firewall is quite possible, an AV even more. But Installing SP2
leaves files scattered around and undoes all the optimisations that have
gone on - it accordingly deletes the PreFetch folder, and that has to be
rebuilt. Defrag the system, and then reboot two or three times during
the next week, so that data on boot accumulates in PreFetch along with
that on programs you load, and the every-three day optimisation will
start to improves things pretty soon