duff, if you have mapped network drives, other client software, or if you use Roxio's Go Back, that will significantly slow down your windows start up. you also might just need more memory, regardless of your processor's power. also, i've found XP to be 'bitchy' with AMD processors.. my home machine i built from scratch; now and then XP hangs during bootup. my work machine is a package from HP, and even this hangs sometimes on bootup.
i've updated my AMD bios from a downloadable file from AMD, just running it. at least.. i think thats what i did.. ..my machine also doesn't have a floppy. you should be able to flash by just running the file from your OS, but you can also do this from a CD.
a cd is no different from a floppy ('cept under most circumstances you can't write to it). in most cases however, a computer automatically looks to the floppy drive for alternative bootup info. heresay, you simply have to tell your bios to look to your CD drive, instead, for bootup info, and it should check a cd while booting up, see the flash info, and do it. i havn't done this before myself but its worth a shot.
boot up your machine and go into the bios.. i'm too lazy to reboot right now and look at what options my own bios has, so you'll have to poke around in the menus till you find 'drive boot order' or something similar to that. make your cd rom the first in bootup order, your OS drive second. save, drop the cd in, then reboot. let me know what happens.
worst case, you could call amd and ask
