Certain programs taking very long to load or don't load at all.

[utkcito]

I don't know what happened, but suddenly the services console takes forever to load, it is "Not responding" but after ~10 min it finally loads and works fine. The same happens for the Palm Desktop. Directory Opus (an explorer replacement) appears on the task manager but won't load at all. The console and palm desktop also appear in the task manager since launch. The system is 99-98% idle during all this. Other parts of the computer seem unaffected.

 

Any ideas where to start?

Many thanks,

Uriel.

[unlovedwarrior]

more information on the machine plz

OS
specs of machine
protection programs
when did this start
what changes have you made? hardware software?

[utkcito]

Specs:
WINDOWS XP PRO SP2
CORE DUO 2 E6400, 1 GB RAM, 160 GB HDD, ATI RADEON X1950 PRO, SOUND BLASTER AUDIGY 2 PLATINUM.
I'M using Zone Alarm security suite, lates version. The problem is present whether it is loaded or not. It started less than a week ago. I've installed lately a couple of adobe programs, and I recall I changed a couple of services' settings, but the 1st thing I did was set them back to the default settings and it didn't help.

[utkcito]

Also, of note, firefox, outlook express, opera, internet explorer, word, excel, NWN2, etc work fine. It is certain programs, as mentioned, that cause trouble.

[unlovedwarrior]

does it do it in safe mode?

tap f8 rapidly before windows loads

[patio]

Specs:
WINDOWS XP PRO SP2
CORE DUO 2 E6400, 1 GB RAM, 160 GB HDD, ATI RADEON X1950 PRO, SOUND BLASTER AUDIGY 2 PLATINUM.
I'M using Zone Alarm security suite, lates version. The problem is present whether it is loaded or not. It started less than a week ago. I've installed lately a couple of adobe programs, and I recall I changed a couple of services' settings, but the 1st thing I did was set them back to the default settings and it didn't help.

What method did you use to disable services and which ones were they ? ?

This is almost always a bad gamble....