OK...I don't think that registry setting is what I'm looking for. When I set DelayedDesktopSwitchTimeout to "5" the only difference I see is after about 5 seconds of the Welcome screen I get a totally black screen for about 30-40 seconds...and then finally get the desktop. Still never see the Kixtart text display.

I may very well have latched on to this "30 second" thing completely by mistake...This may be a wild-goose chase. The real issue is simply that the text doesn't always show up on Win 7 and it always does for XP.