Gail gave several reasons that could cause a slow restart recovery. One of those is the presence of a lot of VLFs. Go check out the various things that Gail listed in that post concerning restart recovery. That should help you understand what is happening. It is an imperative process that happens on every database. Some may be slower than others - and that is sometimes due to the list of causes provided by Gail. A lot of the restart recovery slowness comes down to proper setup of your database. Check for VLFs (if you have a lot of them, this could be your problem) - read the articles by Kimberly Tripp on the subject (one is referenced in my sig). Check your checkpoint settings.