Damn WinXP is exhibiting a really odd bootup delay. The system starts fast enough, and explorer comes up quickly so the user can run programs and they all seem to work like they should, but some services are not being started untill about 1 or 2 minutes after the UI is up. This also is keeping some functionality from working (like the properties window for the network, for example, can't be accessed 'till the services are done loading).
not sure why this is, and of course M$ made their product almost impossible to debug. :(