start up freeze and....

having ran XP on my machine for about 3 months with no problems, on start up it has started to freeze, ive watched the performance indicator, it does nothing then goes from 2 to maximum for a moment then back to 2.. after about 3 minutes it lets me use the machine as normal.

its sluggish on web pages, and occasionally, the task bar turns white, as if in safe mode, whilst desktop remains the same.

im running at 1.2 gig with 256 ram.

if i close and restart machine i get the same freeze, but the task bar stays normal blue colour. ive closed everything in start menu, and cleared the indexing as mentioned in another thread.....

ive used the function to take the machines settings back 1 day, 7 days, and a month, when there were no problems but nothing seems to sort it.

any ideas????

 

now its started to open browser either at maximum view or partial, as it pleases, to the same page.

this things a bag of spanners!!!!!

 

i take it that after scanning as you said, if it does nothing, then all is well??

tas fer the help