Hey, after reinstalling Windows several times over the past ... years.... (I like to keep things clean), the average boot time for me was 6 progress cycles (The blue chunks on the boot screen)... but right now, it's only two.

I was trying to figure out what I was doing different to make booting 3 times faster, then I noticed: I never installed my video card drivers [9600XT].

What is it about the ATI Catalyst drivers that makes them slow down your boot time?

Edit: Actually, some people are saying it's because it runs off .NET

Because the damn thing requires the net framework. The Control Centre is slow as hell.

I noticed that one in Windows... "Damn it, I meant to go to Arrange Icons, but I accidentally clicked "ATI CATALYST CONTROL CENTER", which I apparently need One-Click access to.... now I have to wait 50 seconds for it to load"

Yeah, that thing is shit. I reinstalled my OS a few weeks back, installed the drivers, but never got round to putting the control panel back on - I haven't needed it yet, and its just crap.

Now that I have an LCD monitor, I don't need the control panel; with my old CRT monitor, I had to use the control panel to force 75Hz