1: Any time you make significant changes to your system the next boot is slower. System accounting often runs at startup to keep track of changes and make adjustments as needed. This is normal.
2: You should re-select your boot volume in the System Prefs / Startup Disk pane as the issue often gets confused when you've been bouncing between OS X and XP for a while.
2: You should re-select your boot volume in the System Prefs / Startup Disk pane as the issue often gets confused when you've been bouncing between OS X and XP for a while.