Task Bar Verrry Slow to Load, Populate

[Will Niccolls]

WinXP Home SP 2, updated to most recent update releases.

The taskbar takes about 15 minutes to load and populate the icons on the
right. Quickstart icons load quickly but aren't available to click--the
cursor is in hourglass mode when hovered on taskbar during this time.

I'm racking my brain for something that changed--this started happening
today. Scanned for virus with AVG, nothing. Scanned for spyware with MS
Spyware beta, nothing. Scanned for spyware with Spybot also, nothing...

Event logs show one error during this time--the browser process fails to
start because the server process is pending starting, is in a hung state...

The server process doesn't report starting until about 14 minutes after
power on!

I think this may be the source of the problem, but why would it hang?


-----------
logs

Power up is at 10:53:30, and....

At 11:09:45, I see:
The Computer Browser service depends on the Server service which failed to
start because of the following error:

After starting, the service hung in a start-pending state.

Then at 11:09:46 I see:

The Server service entered the running state.

 

[Guest]

Off the topic but ... this is exactly the reason that I
do a GHOST image of my system twice per month. If
anything happens that I can't fix in twenty minutes or so,
I save my most recent data, email, etc., load my image and
I'm back in business in less than an hour.

A spare hard drive costs 60 bucks. Cheap insurance.

 

[Will Niccolls]

WinXP Home SP 2, updated to most recent update releases.

The taskbar takes about 15 minutes to load and populate the icons on the
right. Quickstart icons load quickly but aren't available to click--the
cursor is in hourglass mode when hovered on taskbar during this time.

Well, I'm not sure what the problem was, but its not happening now. I
disabled the Automatic Update service, and pulled my wireless LAN adapter
for startup. Put the wireless back in after startup and everything is
working fine.