I work in a school system in which we are required to send electronic extracts of our schools' data to the State weekly. I can run a set of extracts on a Windows 2000 machine in 22 minutes. The exact same set of extracts with the same data takes 4 hours, 39 minutes on an XP. Does anyone have any suggestions on what may be making the XP run so much slower. This happens on any XP machine. All districts in our State who run these extracts are complaining about this same issue.

(1) Do the XP machines run much slower for other tasks, or just for the particular task you mentioned ? (2) Is the installed software you use to send electronic extracts of our schools' data to the State weekly the same(other than one is installed for Windows 2000 and one for XP) ? (3) Do the XP machines have SP2 installed ?

Need to know 2 things, do these machines have internet access ? How much memory do they have in them. The reason I'm asking is if there is Internet access their might be a bunch of adware and spyware which will slow down any computer. If there is not enought memory it will do the same thing XP needs around 128 megs to run, if its only got 256 then you have a problem from the start. If you are using all your memory you get brain freeze. Like drinking too much.

Well it sounds like the problem is not on your end but on the States. It sounds like they need to connect to MS and get their systems OS updated....to be able to except the information in a winxp format. Did I use all the incorrect words?...correctly?

i seem to like hydrods point. are the windows 2000 machines more powerful then the machines with windows xp? are they on the same network? same network card speeds? 100mbps or 1000mpbs? AMD Athlontm XP 2400+, MMX, 3DNow, ~2.0GHz Windows XP Pro/Corp 5.1, Build 2600 SP2 1280 mb of RAM Nvidia GeForce FX 5200 1-40gb 1-120gbD

When XP first came out, everyone noted that it was so bloated (compared to win 2k). For example, it has alot of "eye candy". On any decent machine, Windows XP will turn on every visual effect, etc. Each of these extras steal cpu cycles. XP also sucks at managing lots of memory. It gets pretty sloppy and doesn't clean up after itself that well. This will eventually need it to start using the virtual memory (ie: swapping to the hard drive). Also, the XP system tends to accumulate alot of crap (for example, the registry). This will slow it down. To maximize the performance of a XP machine, you really need to re-install the OS every 2 years or so. Alot of companies and institutions are still running win 2k machines. They don't do it to save money; they do it because it's the most stable OS, doesn't come with tons of extra features to bog it down, and it's well secured.

Well that last post is so full of nonsense that I'm not going to say anything more than that. The reality of the OP's post, is that you need to find out why it takes so long to run. Since the report gives you everything you need to know use that as your foundation. You'll also need to run perfomance checks while running these tasks to 'find out why' it's running so slow. We have a audit facility and on any machine whether it's linux or windows (any version) it reports in about 10 minutes after it completes the scan. J. j e r u v y a t y a h o o d o t c o m