Tomcat startup

Dear All,
I m a beginner in Tomcat and is trying to install Tomcat 4.1.12. I have previously installed Tomcat 3.3 and also 4.0. Both worked fine except for encoding problems with Japanese characters. The current version is also working fine except for a strange problem that I am facing right now.
When I start my Tomcat it goes in the digester classes and starts to read all the XML files in my server. when I say it reads means it goes through each and every tag in each and every XML file in the server starting with server.xml.
I am sorry but I am not able to figure where I have commited the mistake due to which this is happening. By the way server starts fine but takes 2-8 minutes depending on the number of XML files I have. Also the same configuration is working fine on the other machine I have. Is it something to do with Xerces or else???
I am using JDK 1.4 and also have Apache installed on my Win NT 4.0 machine. If anyone can help me with this I will be greatful.
Thanks
Regards

using Tomcat from jwsdp it needs some 30 seconds to start (330 Mhz 192 MB) W2000 (nealy NT4).

Does Tomcat work better installed on LINUX than on Windows ?