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just made an interesting discovery while trying to (yet again) work out why the arduino IDE starts up so slowly on my eMachines EM-350 netbook (without bluetooth) running WinXP, SP3.

through much tinkering, i found that turning OFF my anti-virus software, Panda Cloud Antivirus (free version), allows the arduino IDE to start up and work correctly.

with the anti-virus software turned on, the arduino IDE takes several minutes to start, and pops up a Launch 4J error message part way through at about the 1 minute mark. during this time, using windows task manager, i can observe the following:
1. the process "javaw.exe" consumes minimal cpu time (<5%)
2. the anti-virus process "PSANHost.exe" consumes between 40% and 75%

with the anti-virus software turned off, the arduino IDE starts up in less than 30 seconds, without any Launch 4J error message. during this time task manager shows:
1. "javaw.exe" consuming around 45% of cpu time
2. "PSANHost.exe" consuming 0% - expected, as Panda is turned off

note - the computer is relatively slow, with a 1.6GHz atom processor.

SO... if you are having trouble with slow start up of the arduino IDE, try turning off your anti-virus software and see if this fixes the problem... and please do report your results back here.

oh, and i'd not recommend turning off anti-virus software as anything other than a once-off experimental solution!! be sure to turn it back on once you've finished the experiment.