When my computer boots up, I can not access the start menu. Whenever I mouseover the taskbar, it displays an hour glass. The computer is idle and is not running anything and it takes a full 2 minutes before I can actually click on the start button. Hitting the windows button on the keyboard doesn't bring it up either. I just got this new computer, and I installed my 40 Gig Western Digital HD from my old computer as my master drive. I set my 160 Gig Maxtor drive as my slave. I started by doing a fresh NTFS format on both and then installed Windows XP on the master 40 Gig. They are both plugged into the primary IDE port on my Intel 875 motherboard. I suspect a faulty hard drive but I can't be sure because it works fine otherwise with no issues. Is there anyway I can be sure? I'm not sure what I can do, and I feel like I've tried everything. Any help would be greatly appreciated!!

could be an application running in the background, go to start Run and type msconfig...disable any programs that are loading at startup that you dont need

Nothing else appeared to be running in the background when I checked out the processes in task manager. I'll see if something is starting up that I don't know of in the msconfig dialog. Thanks.

FIXED!! Hit Start -> Run and type "msconfig". Under the Services tab, make sure "Workstation" is unchecked. Ever since I did that everything has worked fine. My computer boots up and is ready to go in under 20 seconds from when I hit the power button. No more frozen/not responding taskbar or start menu for my Win XP home!! Woo hoo!! If you are part of Network you will need to disable "File and Print Sharing" instead. Here is where I found the help: http://www.theeldergeek.com/balky_start_menu_items.htm