Q: ok, well the first problem is that ever since may of this year. My computer starts up, and then the start menu bar comes up, but then only a couple of the icons that are on the start icon bar come up, and the desktop icons are missing. Also, I am not able to start any programs when it is in this state. So what I have to do is wait two minutes, and then all of a sudden my start bar icons come and then the desktop icons come, and then any program I started before comes up then. The other problem I have is that sometimes my computer just freezes, like for no reason. It completely freezes, the hard drive doesnt work, the mouse is frozen. Its just like you froze the image on the screen. And then I have to do a hard shutdown with the power button. Do you guys have any idea of what it could be, I am thinking it could be a virus, but how could a virus just freeze the computer so absolutely nothing works. The hard drive doesnt even click so how can the virus even function. Its so creepy because usually the viruses on my previous computers just brought popups and did other crazy things. But nothing like this. I want to know if any of you know what kind of virus this is, and even if it is a virus that is doing this it is pentium 4 with 2 GB ram. It has about 3 GB free space on the hard drive and when I went to run a defrag it said I didnt need to. The computer model is dell dimension 2300 if it matters it is pentium 4 with 2.11 GHz
A: It really is not a good idea to have to many programs load up in the start up menu it eats up to much ram. I would just keep you anti-virus,audio or speakers, and network connections.