You may find that svchost.exe holds a lock on a service whilst all the service libraries are being loaded. This in turn then prevents any other services in the same instance of svchost.exe from starting up until the call to the function has been returned.
An updated version of svchost.exe that will address the issue is available here http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2510636
When you run a Cable diagnostic using the Intel PROSet Network Adapter Diagnostics you may find that the utility incorrectly reports that your network cable is over 100 Metres and/or that the Cable is faulty/poor.
This issue can occur if you have a network switch that implements “power Saving” or “Green Ethernet” this feature is meant to reduce the power to a network port that is supporting a device with a short network cable run.
This “power saving” or “Green Ethernet” feature can cause the diagnostics to fail and can sometimes contribute to network drops and/or poor network throughput. If you have a managed/smart switch then you can normally login via a browser and “Disable” this feature to correct the issue.
You may suffer from a BSOD Stop Error Message with STOP: 0x0000007E and/or experience a Kernel Sockets Leak if you are running an older version of Ancillary Function Driver for Winsock or afd.sys
To prevent these two issues you need to be running the latest version of Afd.sys which can be downloaded from http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2579274
These two issues can occur for two different reasons, a corrupt file in the Windows Prefetch Folder or it could be that the Prefetch Folder is cluttered.
To resolve these issues you need to delete the contents of the C:\Windows\Prefetch folder and then restart your computer.
The Prefetch folder is just a cache of recently used application executables and will be recreated based upon the applications you use most frequently. Over time the folder becomes cluttered with rarely used and prefetched applications hence the launch of applications becomes slower.
You may find following the clear down of the Prefetch folder and reboot that the first time you open each application it is still a little slow, ths is because Windows will automatically re-add the application on its first launch to the prefetch folder. After your first use of the common applications everything should now be much faster and you should find startup times have been reduced.