For the last, oh, two or three weeks, my Xbox 360 has been sluggish when signing me in to Xbox Live. I’d start the console, the logo screen would go by, the dashboard would come up, and I’d have to wait 20-30 seconds before my account would auto sign-in. The real crazy bit was that if I did anything - move to a different blade in the dashboard, manually try to sign in, or whatever - it would mess up the networking so that I’d have to shut the whole console down and reboot in order for it to connect. This weirdness wasn’t happening before - I was used to it signing me in within five or six seconds of the dashboard coming up.

I tried all sorts of things - static IP addressing, clearing my settings cache, resetting the network to factory defaults and re-entering everything in manually - and nothing worked. Looking at my network settings, nothing was fighting for the same address, and every other device in the house connected to the network just fine.

My last ditch effort last night: reboot the wireless router and the devices connected to it. Shut down all the stuff connected to the network (laptop, PS3, etc.), reboot the router, and turn everything back on. That fixed it. No more sluggish login. Whatever was gummed up in the works has been flushed out.