There are several threads on this subject, but I thought I would summarize my last month of diagnosis in one place. (By the way, I am _not_ a mechanic; oil changes are about the limit of my experience, but you folks have educated me quite a bit):

Symptom - after 5 years of fine starting, car begins to take 2-8 seconds to start instead of the near instant response I'm used to. When the engine does begin to turn over, it is 'weak' at first (not all 5 cyl firing?), but quickly gets to a nice idle. (For the record, the car is pampered and has 71K miles.)

My conclusion - bad check valve on fuel pump. Start time depends on how much fuel pressure has been lost since it was turned off. I assume the fuel basically drains back into the fuel tank, and has to make its way all the way back up to the injectors each time I start it. I verified this theory with a fuel pressure gauge. I attached it to the shraeder valve on the right of the fuel rail under the plastic shrowd. It takes varying amounts of time, but after running the engine (with the gauge connected) you can see the pressure go down from about 40lbs to 0.

Other things I tried during the diagnois:
- replace spark plugs
- switch to Mobil1 synth oil (several web sites suggest that 'stuck' tappets can have a similar effect, but due to lack of compression -not fuel- when the engine is started)
- fuel injector additive - just seemed like something easy to try
- get the engine up above 3000 rpm (something I don't usually do) to 'blow out' deposits. This seemed like a goofy idea, but my mechanic suggested it...
- new battery. (The old one died, but I don't think it was related to the starting problem.)

I did _not_ go to the nearest dealer (Annapolis Volvo)
- because the car is out of warranty and I don't think they're worth the $
- after 6 trips to the dealer, they never did get my winshield washers to work
- you have to schedule appt too far in advance

I'm not going to fix the fuel pump, because my mechanic thinks it's not worth the $. However, it does bug me. I hope to have this car for more than 200K miles, but I won't buy another Volvo.

How long does it take for your FP to drop?
Before assuming anything and if the FP drops off quicker than normal (it does normally drop after a while), I'd advise carefully removing the fuel rail with injectors and making sure that you don't have one or more injectors leaking as that's another possible cause of fuel pressure loss and hard starting. Usually when that begins to happen, when it does start it'll run rough for a few seconds because one or more cylinders is flooded. That sounds like your description above. I must note here that when removing your injectors, all connected together with the fuel rail and testing them for leakage (putting paper towels or rags under them), one must be carefull to realize that if there's a spark present with the gas squirting you will have a fire so I wouldn't recommend that everyone trys this one at home. If you are determined to do that however, do have a fire extenguisher handy just in case.
There's also no mystery concerning w.washers so some "herman" must be looking at that. Does the pump work (hear noise)? If not, one then checks for voltage with a test light or meter. If it's working but no fluid comes out, remove the lines from the delivery valves directly under the nozzles and try the washer switch as the delivery valves commonly fail (clog) on X70s. If the fluid's not getting to the delivery valves, there is another restriction further upstream (check valve in a plastic "T") which can be replaced or removed to test. It's not THAT complicated.

The problem with the w.washers was that I had tons of pressure coming out of the headlight squirters and only a few drops out of the windshield ones. Yes it seems like a valve was backwards some where, but
a) Although I'm mechanically inclined, I much prefer to play with my kids or persue other hobbies than work on my cars.
b) the car was less than a year old
c) I had planned to let Annap Volvo do all the work on the car

The car is out of warranty now, and I just got sick of dealing with it, so rerouted the tubing to send all of the cleaner fluid to the windshield. My car never gets dirty enough to make the headlight wipers useful anyway.

Thanks for your thoughts on the inject pressure leak. I'm going to ask my mechanic about looking into that one for me.