very long page execution on local WAMP - strange, no?

Hi all,

Hoping someone can help me tackle this. Installed 5.2 onto a local WAMP install, which otherwise is really fast...
However, after installing Drupal and loading it with a number of modules, custom theme, etc., the site has become unreasonably slow.
I've increased memory in php.ini and max_time to even be able to access certain pages; had to disable some modules in phpmyadmin to get past the WSOD...

What's strange is that queries take about 3s and the rest 40s+. Now, httpd.exe does go up to 80-90% cpu on a P4-1.5 laptop with 1.2 GB ram, which is very strange, as the site is virtually empty - my 5 year old Wordpress executes in about 12 ms.

Apache's error.log gives almost no clues - the last few lines that correspond more or less to the error are:

[Mon Jul 30 00:42:01 2007] [error] [client 127.0.0.1] PHP Fatal error:  Maximum execution time of 30 seconds exceeded in C:\\www\\webapps\\drupal\\includes\\file.inc on line 644
[Mon Jul 30 00:53:41 2007] [error] [client 127.0.0.1] ModSecurity: Warning. Match of "rx (?:\\\\b(?:(?:i(?:nterplay|hdr|d3)|m(?:ovi|thd)|(?:ex|jf)if|f(?:lv|ws)|varg|cws)\\\\b|r(?:iff\\\\b|ar!B)|gif)|B(?:%pdf|\\\\.ra)\\\\b)" against "RESPONSE_BODY" required. [id "970902"] [msg "PHP source code leakage"] [severity "WARNING"] [hostname "localhost"] [uri "/phpmyadmin/tbl_replace.php"] [unique_id "r4GyaMCoAgoAABVYnsAAAAD4"]
[Mon Jul 30 00:54:26 2007] [error] [client 127.0.0.1] PHP Fatal error:  Maximum execution time of 30 seconds exceeded in C:\\www\\webapps\\drupal\\includes\\file.inc on line 641

Below are the top few lines from Devel module... Does anyone have a clue what could be going on... anything worth trying?

Executed 112 queries in 318.73 milliseconds. Queries taking longer than 5 ms and queries executed more than once, are highlighted. Page execution time was 40954.95 ms.
ms	#	where	query
44.57	1	aggregator_block	SELECT i.* FROM aggregator_category_item ci LEFT JOIN aggregator_item i ON ci.iid = i.iid WHERE ci.cid = 3 ORDER BY i.timestamp DESC, i.iid DESC LIMIT 0, 10
43.86	1	block_list	SELECT DISTINCT b.* FROM blocks b LEFT JOIN blocks_roles r ON b.module = r.module AND b.delta = r.delta WHERE b.theme = 'litejazz' AND b.status = 1 AND (r.rid IN (2,3) OR r.rid IS NULL) ORDER BY b.region, b.weight, b.module
38.43	1	_nodewords_load	SELECT * FROM nodewords WHERE type = 'node' AND id = '1'
29.6	1	taxonomy_node_get_terms	SELECT t.* FROM term_node r INNER JOIN term_data t ON r.tid = t.tid INNER JOIN vocabulary v ON t.vid = v.vid WHERE r.nid = 2 ORDER BY v.weight, t.weight, t.name
27.29	1	taxonomy_node_get_terms	SELECT t.* FROM term_node r INNER JOIN term_data t ON r.tid = t.tid INNER JOIN vocabulary v ON t.vid = v.vid WHERE r.nid = 1 ORDER BY v.weight, t.weight, t.name
11.52	1	cache_set	INSERT INTO cache_menu (cid, data, created, expire, headers) VALUES ('1:en', 'a:4:{s:10:\"path index\";a:264:{s:18:\"admin/logs/adsense\";s:2:\"84\";s:28:\"admin/logs/adsense/top_pages\";s:2:\"85\";s:25:\"ad