[mlevy79]

Starting a few weeks ago, when I start up my Dell Inspiron running XP Home, the system freezes during startup. It gets to the desktop screen, but not all the usual programs that load during startup do so. The blue Avira icon in the lower-right corner appears with a red circle slash. The mouse cursor moves, but that's the only response I get from the system. Control-Alt-Delete does nothing; the only way to proceed is to hold down the power button for a few seconds and reboot. This happens seemingly at random, maybe 1/3 or 1/4 startups. Same problem reported here. Any ideas???

[Phantom010]

You may have too many programs loading together at startup. Go to Start / Run / type msconfig. And, perhaps a lack of RAM?

Under the Startup tab, trim it down a little by unchecking unnecessary applications.