Hmm, well it takes 8 seconds to task in and most zones have the kickoff at 5 seconds. Try lowering the resolution, that might speed DirectX surface creation up a little bit. Background programs causing this are doubtful (unless on 9x/me), because they normally run at normal prioty and an active app always has 0.5 steps higher priority than its setting. (Unless priority has been set to background programs in the system proeprties)