Vista Tutorial - SP2 Slow bootup

I hadn't done a restart of my PC since installing SP2 last week....so I had to reboot to change some fan settings in the BIOS and then I noticed Vista now boots to my desktop normal but things that show in the taskbar like my Kaspersky AV, my internet connection status icon, and the couple other things like my sidebar all take an additional minute to fully become ready.

These things normally came functional within a few seconds of the desktop coming up so there is an issue and the only thing that has changed on this PC is the installation of SP2. I used to be able to open programs right away but now I have to wait till those taskbar items are ready otherwaise anything I try to open just hangs till those items are loaded.

Anyone else notice this? I have looked through the event viewer and I see "Slow bootup" warning logs but none of them direct me to the culprit, in the past things like my vid card drivers have slowed bootups but these are things I can live with since it was not noticible but what I have going on now is very noticible.

If anyone knows a way I could track down the cause, unless it is SP2 then I will just have to deal with it, reply back with any ideas.

Update: Did a search for this problem and I am not the only one noticing the problem and others are experiencing much longer boot times just as I am and sidebar slow to load. Most of the time my PC runs all the time and just resumes from standby so maybe they will optimize this soon.

I finally dug around in performance reports till I finally found one stating that some AEDIfilters were causing my system to hang. These are a part of my sound card stuffs which has to do with microphone enhancements so I turned it off in the sound utility and disabled it in the startup configuration and all is back to normal. It has a problem with with SP2 evidently and I most likely will not miss this option since I don't think I was even using it.

This is part of the utility included with my Sound Max sound card in case anyone else is having the same problem and I disabled the "Smax 4pnp Application" in the startup menu and all is fine now.

Hi.
I'm having the exact same problem and nothing seems to help - it's been almost two weeks now and I can't seem to find a solution. I also tried disabling SoundMax at startup, but that didn't help.

This is ridiculus. Why is Microsoft even releasing such crap? How do I make my computer boot up fast again without reinstalling my OS (I'm usning Vista Premium x64)?

I have a QuadCore processor and 8GB of RAM, so hardware isn't the issue here...

Any ideas? Please?