have noticed that any application/programme is taking some 8-10 secs to "leave" the sys tray ie clicking on the "X" to close a programme or say control panel etc the app closes right away, however it takes 8-10 secs before I can select the START button again, never noticed this happen until I installed SP3. not really a problem more a pain waiting for the START BUTTON TO FREE UP>While I am waiting I do notice the drive light is active.Any ideas what could be causing this. XP home: P4 4.8Gig: 4 gig ram maybe I'm just inpatient !!. SJ

Steve47, first reboot just in case your 'temp' files have grown unwieldy. A common ailment is a file called 'index.dat'. It gets read every time and can take quite a while if it’s too bloated. It's like a log file and keeps a record of every site you visit on the web. Empty, it's 32K, but it can grow HUGE. It's a protected file and can't be deleted by normal methods. CCleaner (free @: http://www.ccleaner.com/) can get rid of it (not to worry, it gets rebuilt EMPTY on the next boot.). HTH. Ed in Texas.

Hi Ed, Thanks for the help & advice I'll sure take a look at what you have mentioned. In my first message I said the sys tray...I was refering to the task bar of course you realised that . Now this morning when I fired up i did a test & apps/programmes shut down staright away,however, after I had been on the "net" progs/apps slowed down again ???. Does this give you a further clue??.Cheers for now Steve UK

Perform the steps to increase performance in windows Xp Click Start and then Run and type regedit Application Hung Timeout value HKEY_CURRENT_USER-Control Panel-Desktop HungAppTimeout 1000 Grace time before killing apps on shutdown HKEY_CURRENT_USER-Control PanelDesktop WaitToKillAppTimeout=1000 HKEY_USERS-DEFAULT-Control Panel-Desktop AutoEndTasks=1 HKEY_USERS-DEFAULT-Control Panel-Desktop WaitToKillAppTimeout=1000 HKEY_USERS-DEFAULT-Control Panel-Desktop HungAppTimeout = 1000 Speed up shutdown HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE-SYSTEM-CurrentControlSet-Control WaitToKillServiceTimeout = 1000 T HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE-SYSTEM-CurrentControlSet-Control-Session Manager-Memory Management-DisablePagingExecutive changed to 1 Delete the Contents of the Prefetch Folder in Microsoft Windows XP Click Start and then Run, The Run Window appears Type %Windir%\prefetch, and click OK Click Edit then Select Select All Right-Click the highlighted items, & click Delete. The folders contents are deleted.