system
5
Yup, EnablePrefetcher already set to 3. I have only just reverted to this state. Curiously I had disabled Prefetcher since 2008 precisely to mitigate slow startup. Prefetcher now works great but only after creating the exclusions of Avast folders from the real-time scanning by Avast!
The system otherwise works quite beautifully with great stability and decent performance despite the modest (by current standards) processor. Of course one is constrained to retain the system board in use when Windows XP was installed (unless someone knows better). Understandably I do not wish to do a reinstall when it works so well.