I like to think i am a little bit knowledgeable about XP, but this one baffles me. A week ago, i had a problem with XP, and had to do a repair with the Windows disk. Afterwards i had to re-install SP2 and all of the updates. Now the system is working okay again, but something has changed. Before the re-installation, when i would boot up and get to the screen where the 3 dots move from left to right ( indicating that it is loading windows i think ), it would always go across 4 times. Now after doing the re-installation, it now goes across like 15 times. Everything works good, and i have done all the cleanup with disk cleanup, ace utilities, ad-aware, defragmenting, etc etc, and it still takes 15 passes. I even went into Computer Management, and then Services, and shutdown the recommended services that are not needed, and it still did not change anything. Just what exactly is windows doing when that particular screen is up showing the 3 dots moving from left to right? And what might be controlling how long those dots are there? Thank you for any responses.

You are probably loading more apps at start up than before. Try hitting control/ ALT/ DEL and see what is running.

I have not loaded any other apps, since fixing the operating system. It's not like it is causing me difficulties. I just wondered why it was now taking like 3 times as long for the splash screen to be up.

If all is good and you just want to improve your boot time, try TuneXP 1.5. sLLs

Based on my observation, the caterpillar screen stays up longer than usual after you: 1) You "repair" XP, and 2) You neglect to defrag the system drive. i_XpUser

Also, after some XP updates, it sets up some files to load at startup, that may not have before. I have seen that happen after just doing an XP update. Sometimes it is that XP has configured files to load at startup that weren't before, and sometimes it is a "Service" that wasn't auto-started before. A good start-up mgr prgm will help determine what you need started or not. There are lots of freeware / shareware / free trial startup mgrs. Startup Cop is one that comes to mind, but not sure if it's still free. I use the ones contained in Fix-It Util 7 Pro and Sys. Mech. Pro 7, both have free trials for d/l. In msconfig (go Start>Run> type 'msconfig') Under 'Startup' tab, most of what's there doesn't need to load at startup (usually). In Task Manager (Cntrl + Alt + Del)look for new files or processes that you didn't see before. One that seemed to slow down my boot was "ctfmon.exe" in \windows\system32\, so I unchecked it in msconfig. Another tool is MS Process Explorer, avail for d/l from M$. It basically replaces Task Mgr, but gives lots more info about processes & other system stuff. It came highly recommended, and I like it.