Drupal running slow on localhost

I have found it to be slow as well.

I found installing XAMPP, instead of installing the components individually, speeds things up significantly.

It is also a function of your computer hardware.

Also your PHP memory limit. See "Increase PHP memory limit" http://drupal.org/node/207036

Hello MBM,
I use PHP, Apache, and MySQL to create local applications the way people traditional use Perl or Python or Visual Basic with Microsoft Access. Starting with Drupal 4, I build them as Drupal modules. There are hundreds, possibly thousands, of machines using my applications going all the way back to PHP 3. Speed is never a problem unless:

Windows Vista is so slow at everything that I now automatically throw Vista in the trash. XP, 2000, or Ubuntu, anything but Vista.

You have a firewall in place. Windows firewall is the worst because it only blocks useful stuff, not the bad stuff. Some (most) of the other local firewalls do stupid things. I use only firewalls in the router providing the Internet connection.

You use Internet Explorer. For some reason, Internet Explorer will wander off doing nothing for up to a minute. The only thing I can think of is that it calls home to tell Microsoft all about your Web browsing. For that reason, I no longer use Internet Explorer for anything.

You have your host definitions wrong. You can create a situation where the access should be local but the browser will go out to the Web looking for the site then timeout. (IE does this occasionally even when the host definitions are right.) You can also make mistakes in the Apache configuration where the same thing happens, you should be working locally but something slips through and goes out to the Internet looking for a site.

When I start a new install on a new machine or a new operating system, I work through a sequence.
1/ Install Apache, configure Apache and hosts file for the test site, then access the Web site. You should see the default Apache Web page.
2/ Install PHP then MySQL then phpMyAdmin. phpMyAdmin should display when PHP is working. You should be able to see the MySQL configuration information when MySQL is working.
3/ Install Drupal. You know that Apache, PHP, and MySQL are already working. Drupal 6 works beautifully on a new install except for PHP 5.3.0. For PHP 5.3.0, you turn some messages off.