Problems loading 7.3.1 after upgrading

[whitehurstj1]

This is my first post to the site, but I've been told I'd get the best advice on solving my problem here.

I just upgraded to PTLE 7.3.1 from 7.0 a few days ago. I have a Dell Inspiron Laptop (with the right supported chipset) 6000 with a 40 GB internal HD, Macie 160GB External HD, 1GB RAM, Digi 002, Presonus DigiMax LT lite-piped to my 002 and a multitude of plug-ins.

My 7.0 version ran flawlessly, but when I upgraded to 7.3 and then installed the 7.3.1 update my load time increased from 30 seconds to over 5 minutes...literally. My processor utilization registers 99% while loading and I've been through all the performance enhancement suggestions in msconfig, but nothing seems to help. The only strange thing I noticed with this upgrade (I've done several now) is that it asked me which version of driver software I wanted to install for my 002. I just picked the first one on the list (there were two) and rolled on through the install. I've tried everything over the last 3 days to no evail. No matter what I do it takes forever to load the software. It seems to get hung up on the plug-ins section and then again when loading the DAE drivers.

Has anyone else had this problem and figured out how to correct it?

Any advice/suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.