XP won't open programs for about five minutes during start-up

[Datadog]

My system runs fine, but lately, when starting it up, there's always a five-minute delay between the desktop appearing, and any program being able to open. I can click around the desktop just fine otherwise.

I've been browsing similar topics for answers, and I've done the following 1) Scanned for malware, 2) Cleaned the registry, 3) Turned off all non-essential services, 4) Re-installed Java, and of course, 5) Updated everything. So now my computer is actually running better than ever, but that five-minute stall is still happening. It's like there's one program holding everything up, but the task manager isn't clear on which one it is since the CPU Usage is practically nothing during those few minutes.

Is there any program or method I can use to diagnose the problem?

 

[Datadog]

Whoops - after a couple weeks of having this problem, I fixed it almost immediately after posting about it.

It was my AntiVirus software. It appeared to be running fine, but I found one of the shields was not starting at all and caused the same delay whenever I tried to start it. After repairing the program, my computer's back up to speed.

 

[mailpup]

Thanks for coming back to post the solution to the problem.