XP Slow program launch

[holdgaj]

I have an issue where sometimes when I try to launch a program (Word, IE
whatever) I get a delay of approx 30-40 seconds before it launches.
Interestingly it happens on BOTH my laptop (XP Home) & Desktop (XP Pro) Both
systems have 2G memory & plenty of free disk space. I run Zonealarm on both
systems, I was wondering if the delay might be related to a virus scan or
similar

Any help appreciated

 

[John]

Immediately you start one of these programs, do a ctr-alt-delete to
bring up the task manager and then click on performance to see if
something is hogging the CPU.

John.

 

[Guest]

Are you opening up an application as soon as you have booted into xp. It may
not seem it, but behind the veil of the desktop, there are processes still
being opening and checked.
Click Start, Run, type msconfig and go to Startup. Look to see if you have
some startup programs that do not need to start at boot up. This can make a
difference.

Regards
Stuart

 

[holdgaj]

Actually the program occurrence is random, it can happen any time, even when
the machine has been up for days. There's no increase in CPU load when the
problem occurs, which makes me doubt that its a virus scan of the program
being loaded.