Hi Claudio,

I really appreciate the help, but the problem has been solved.

It turned out that the issue was being caused by a CPU affinity problem
between IB and Windows XP. Apparently, XPs SMP capabilities can be a bit
stupid sometimes...

I downloaded IBAffinity which forces the affinity (a dirty solution) and
that fixed the problem. Logins are now instantaneous again.

What's strange is that my Win2K machine is also a SMP machine and was not
affected by this issue. MS must have made some "improvements" to their usage
of SMP when coming out with XP...

Stan

> > I think Tilo is right.
> > Give it a try with a fresh installation.
> >
> > I have just installed a fresh installation of WinXP to examine
> > your issue and - you won't believe it - there were no connection
> > delays.
> >
> > I have just installed XP for this purpose - and I have connected
> > several DBs.
>
> Anyway, since there're a lot of GDBs already, it would be nice if Borland
> shouts so MS will consider removing GDB by default from the "protected"

(or

> spoiled) monitored file extensions. Isc4.gdb cannot be changed without
> recompiling the engine. Maybe we should use the same extension than MsSql

v7

> and v2k use for the databases. And a lot of small single-user systems
> relying on IB/FB may be installed on Me, causing the same question to go
> over and over.
>