Hi everybody! I just bought a new IBM NetVista Pentium IV 1.6 GHz, 640 MB Ram.... It came with Windows XP Home preinstalled. Everything works perfect, but the start menu... I don't know why but it takes forever to open the submenus (well, not forever... maybe 3 seconds) and the fade-in and fade-out effects are really slow.... Also, when I close the start menu it takes even longer, 3-4 seconds and kind of choppy... strange I've tried unchecking the transition effects for menus but that didn't help.... I also removed some unnecessary icons, but that didn't help either... I have no idea of what could possibly be... Some programs that load at startup are Norton Antivirus 2002, Direct CD.... My video card is an nVidia with 16 mb.... By the way, the start menu opens fine.... the problem is when I open the submenus (show all programs).. I think this shouldn't happen, as the system is pretty good.... I also have an old IBM ThinkPad Pentium 233 Mhz 80 MB Ram with XP and the start menu is not that slow! Any idea? Any one? Please help!

Go to the following address. Gives a registry tweak for Start Menu. Check out the whole site, a lot of tips! http://www.tweakxp.com/tweakxp/display.asp?id=29

Try this and see if this works... Go to your desktop, right click on My Computer click => Tab advanced => In the Proformance Section, click settings and disable show shadows under menus. If it already is.. disable some more stuff or use chkdsk or defragment your computer... I hope this helps! azn_dragon87

Please remember that DirectCD is not really compatible with Win XP. Go to Start/Run, type msconfig and press Enter. Then go to the Startup tab, look for all the references to DirectCD (there may be more than one) and uncheck them. Click OK, and restart your computer when prompted to do so. You can also try getting Powertoys or TweakUI for Windows (you can search for it by using google.com. If you get Powertoys for Win XP it's better, but you can also make do with TweakUI, which is an older version meant for Win 9x/Me). After you install it, look at all the options. It's an excellent little program from Microsoft that will let you tweak (change) many settings, including the speed of your start menu. For the time being, you'll have to download it from a website other than Microsoft's, since they've removed it from their site. The reason seems to be that they're preparing a new, updated version of it. Good luck. Juan

Thanks a lot to all of you for your help! You are really great..... I have tried all your recommendations, but unfortunately none of them has worked... Yesterday I tried changing the color settings from 32 bits to 16 bits and it seems it made the start menu faster... The time it takes to open the submenus is now normal.... What do you think? Could this be the solution or am I just reducing the symptoms of a bigger problem? Thanks! Dan

I have the same issue. Dell Laptop. I a P3 1 Gig with a Radeon 7500 64MB. This thing should rock, but the start menu and favorites menu are so slow it drives me crazy. Let me know if you find another solution. Cause XP looks like crap with 16bit color.

I have exactly the same problem. When I right-click on the screen it also takes forever, on a system which should hoon. I suspect that it is something to do with Norton 2002 as that is what I have in common with you!