Hi Will, I don't know what kind of network you're running so I'll focus just on how to improve the win2k workstation's performance.  Slow boot times in Windows 2000 can happen for a variety of reasons but from my own experience in maintaining a win2k office network with most of the clients running win2k pro, check out the following things:
1.  NAV 2002 (we run Symantec Antivirus Corp Ed.8.x - basically the same thing as your software) - unfortunately norton will slow up the boot times for Win2k or any other os for that matter - there's nothing you can do about that, real time protection is going to have a performance hit price tag associated with it - but I believe it's good software so I'm not going to tell you to uninstall it considering all of the cr@p that people email each other or download
 off the net.  Keep it and maintain your virus def's and perform regular scans on a weekly basis if you can.
2.  Run a registry cleaner like JVTools which is free, works awesome and finds alot of garbage reg entries that can be removed and a less cluttered windows registry will improve windows performance (both during bootup and during regular operation).  JVTools or it's older brother RegCleaner (same author, they're both free), will display the list of start up programs that run whenever Win2k boots up - look in this list and determine what doesn't need to be there and remove it.  Reducing the number of programs that run when Win2k boots up will improve boot times.
3.  Install all the available security & critical update patches for windows 2000, which is all available from the windows update site.
4.  Re-install (or install if you haven't already) Windows 2000 SP4 (if you're running sp1, 2 or 3 still - what are you waiting for?) just to make sure tha
t windows is running with the most updated service pack.  It really does make a difference.  It's amazing how many bug fixes there are with each service pack - I wonder how win2k ran in the first place without any of it's service packs. Before I concede to rebuilding a win2k box (format hd and reinstall os), I always reinstall win2k sp4 and attempt the rest of the stuff shown here to see if I can "revive" a slow non performing pc.
5.  Install & run some form of spyware removal software like Ad-Aware or Spybot.  Tons of cr@p gets installed by other software without you knowing it and if you think your pc doesn't contain any spyware, install & run this stuff and find out that you have 10-50 pieces of spyware installed -  I believe alot of this software is free for personal use.
6.  I don't sell software but a total must have for me is Norton Utilities 2002 (they're may be an updated version of this software available now.) I got hooked on Norton Utilities when I first ins
talled an older version on my previous nt4 servers and win9x machines. Aside from the awesome disk defrag speed disk utility which you should run once every 2 - 4 weeks to improve disk performance, it comes with a windows system doctor app which analyzes your windows installation, registry entries and a whack of other stuff and provides you a list of quite a few areas that need to be fixed and it then proceeds to fixing these problems for you automatically or it prompts you for a method to fix them.  I have personally used this software on a quite a few win2k boxes with slow performance and it dramatically improves performance.

Maybe a few people out there won't agree with all of my suggestions but take into account that I don't have to rebuild machines on a regular basis and I have a network of about 50-60 users so my methods work for me and could probably work well for you.  We have win2k workstations with hardware ranging from low end pII 350's to high end p4 2.8ghz cpu's.  Memory st
andards are a min. of 128mb of RAM, 256 would be recommended as ideal, more than that would be great.  We run OffXP Pro on every user's box, as400 emulation sessions, ie6 sp1 and a variety of other software so the machines I manage need to be in good shape to run every day without too much problem.  I didn't see any hardware spec's listed for your dell unit but I'm sure they probably fall in the range I listed above for my pc's so windows 2000 should perform without too much problem.  In the end if none of these suggestions work, you may want to consider rebuilding the machine, (fdsk & reformat the hd, reinstall the os, etc.)

Good Luck and let us know how your win2k workstation's performance problems progress (improve, get worse, etc.)
....rob,wpg


On Thu, 11 Dec 2003 11:29:01 -0500, Will Stephenson <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>Hello!
>
>I have a client who has a 2 year old Dell with Win2K inst
alled on a peer to
>peer network. This machine has had issues since the day it arrived, but it
>is useable. Here's the latest:
>
>On a reboot (or cold start), the machine boots up fine to the desktop (and
>just before I can see the momentary flash of the connection made to a mapped
>network drive). After maybe 10 seconds at the desktop, the hourglass
>disappears and all seems wonderful. Two anomalies: the network connection
>icon in the system tray is not there, and the Norton AV (2002) auto protect
>is disabled (though in the system tray, it looks fine - no red X through the
>icon). All local programs work fine. However, I cannot access the network -
>more or less. When I click on Network Neighborhood, the status bar shows the
>correct number of objects, but the window is blank and the "program" says it
>is not responding. Attempting to access the *bad* computer from another on

>the network brings up an error message of access denied.  And here's the fun
>part: after around 4 minutes after the desktop comes up, the network icon
>shows up in the system tray, and EVERYTHING works as it is supposed to.
>Norton's? I have to open the program and, poof, auto protect is back on.
>
>This happens whether I jump up and down, change settings, open programs,
>etc. It just takes 4 minutes to get going correctly (maybe it's just
>sleepy?).
>
>I would greatly appreciate any suggestions anyone might have. Please let me
>know if you need more information. Thanks!
>
>Will Stephenson
>Acadia Technologies Inc.
>mailto:[log in to unmask]
>
>The obvious is never obvious until someone tells you.
>
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