>>>Now for the really weird part: I accidentally discovered during this process that if I log on as soon as possible during the boot and immediately start the app before the system finishes all its startup stuff, the application springs up in under 2 seconds like it does on all the other machines. If I exit and restart, it is slow again. If I reboot and wait for the boot and logon to finish accessing the HD the app is slow. Turning everything off in MSConfig changes nothing. If I run Task Manager while loading the app it shows the processor idle 98% to 99% for nearly all of the program startup. I've run ProcMon and see nothing unusual in the process and the profile looks very similar to the profile on yet another similar, but older GX280, although I have not compared the thousands of events line-by-line.
>>>
>>A few things I can think of (in no particular order):
>
>much longer list that I thought about typing ;-)
>one thing to check up front is the way the disc is read: somtimes [U]DMA access
>is downgraded to PIO and that could explain it.

Yes, especially on older systems that can be a symptom of not having the mobo chipset/IDE drivers installed. Their absence may mean UDMA is not available, so as you point out, the HD interface is forced to revert to PIO mode.

OTOH James is saying all other apps are fast. If HD PIO mode was the problem, you'd expect a slow system boot and slow performance of all apps.