I have Mandriva 2005 (MDK 10.2) installed on a desktop and a laptop. On the laptop, Dillo launches and is ready to go in less than a second. On the desktop, Dillo takes at least one minute to launch. Starting Dillo from a command line in a terminal on either computer reveals no difference. Adobe Acrobat 7 launches on the laptop OK, but does not launch on the desktop after a lot of harddrive activity - running from a terminal does not show any error messages. Uninstalling Acrobat 7, and installing Acrobat 5, and then starting from terminal displays error not able to find fonts. All other installed applications seem to launch normally.

Where do I look for the cause of these problems, and fix them??

What are the comparative specs of the laptop + desktop? Do you have any additional services running on the desktop, and are you using different WM's, have different amounts of RAM/swap available? It shouldn't be taking so long to load so long as you have no physical errors with your hard drives unless you have something eating all your system resources in the background.