System tray items take about 10m to load up

[Microsoft]

I have XP Home installed with service pack 1. Recently, whenever I log into
my unpriviledged account, it takes about 5-10 minutes for all of the system
tray items to appear. If I log out during this time, everything disappears
from my desktop except for my wallpaper and it takes a long time to log out.
Sometimes a box pops up saying that explorer has stopped responding. I have
tried deleting my user accound and recreating it, but the problem crops up
again after a few reboots. It doesn't occur in any of the other user
accounts.

Last night I trashed my entire hard drive and reinstalled everything, but
the problem has started up again today!!!

Another possibly related problem - when I log in as an administrator and
click on My Computer, a window opens up with a flashlight icon, but it hangs
there for many minutes. I also can't browse any folder contents in My
Computer, when I'm installing new programs. I've tried innumerable hacks
from the net in the past,but to no avail. After my reinstall the problem
has resurfaced.

Any ideas?

Yours in desperation,

Robert Schmidli.

 

[purplehaz]

Use msconfig to stop all the tray programs from loading. Then turn them on
one at a time and see which one is giving you the problem. Once you find it,
update it or get rid of it. Make sure you have enough ram as well, 256 mb
should be the minimum.