Must be something to do with your system configuration. I've found that the Systems I have here with SP2 installed actually boot quicker than those without it.

I know what you mean greasywog87. Have the same problem. I've heard really bad things about SP2 for XP. One of my relatives works at Boeing and she heard from some of the tech agents that XP's Service Pack 2 may even have glitches that could harm some system files and screw up your firewall. I suggest you don't install SP2 on any other XP OS until windows can fix this problem. Also, when windows comes out with a new Service Pack, DO NOT download it right away. Sometimes, such as SP2, they may come out with one that contains glitches, may work good for some people, and screw all the other people. So wait before installing a new service pack until windows can fix the little problems.

cargenius, i think u mean when microsoft fixes the problems, not windows. Anyway, generally system performance is faster, its just that it takes ages to boot.

My system configuration is as good as I can get. I don't know what else to do.

I've come across a couple of other situations where people have experienced problems after preparing a slipstreamed installation of SP2. I've not come across such problems where the installation hasn't been slipstreamed.

Damned if I know just where problems might lie, though.

But there definitely is NOT an inherent problem in SP2 which leads to such problems as slow startup or the issues described by cargenious. What you CAN get are problems where software is installed which makes illegal calls and thus does not adhere to the standards checked for by SP2s security features. For such software exceptions need to be set to security restrictions for the programs which breach such standards, and that is a fault of the programs themselves, not of Windows