strange problem with winxp startup pls help

Hi everyone,

i wonder if anyone could help with this problem... When I boot up the computer, it gets to the logon screen fine, but when i click to log in it begins to load and then stalls for half a minute or so, then loads a bit more and stalls again for a minute or so, and then it finally loads windows.

When it stalls, it doesn't completely freeze up - i can press ctrl+alt+del at which point the logon screen disappears (desktop color shows up but no explorer) and task manager comes up. I can see explorer.exe is already running but has not appeared - other processes are also running, but nothing is building up any memory usage... I think the process thats causing the problem is one of the svchost processes (the biggest one). I would watch as all the other processes are doing nothing and then after a short time svchost begins to use cpu usage and builds up more memory, i suppose starting more services. After the second delay with no cpu activity, svchost takes off again and finishes loading, at which point everything else loads right away. It seems like everything is waiting for svchost to start its services.

I used tasklist /svc to find the services running under svchost - They're listed below. The one that seems to be causing the problem is the svchost that uses the most memory, the one with several services under it. Does anyone know what might be freezing my computer? I've already tried every antivirus and anti-spyware program under the sun and nothing is found. I've tried disabling non-essential services (I already have alot of them disabled anyway) and I always keep my startup clear of any unwanted programs... I looked through all the automatic starting services and found nothing suspicious... I think my next step will be to try a repair install of windows - unless someone else can reccommend other courses of action.

PS - my problem is likely related to my recent carelessness with installing programs. For various reasons I've been installing and uninstalling alot of software and drivers recently. It's a fairly new installation of windows but I've really been pusing it... While I try to do installs/uninstalls as cleanly as possible, I must say there's a good chance I've "confused" windows in some way, with all my tinkering and tweaking - I'm also quite suspicious about that Tweak-XP program that I had used...

Imagename / PID / Services
------------------------------
svchost.exe 1112 DcomLaunch, TermService

svchost.exe 1168 RpcSs

svchost.exe 1208 6to4, AppMgmt, AudioSrv, CryptSvc, Dhcp,
EventSystem, lanmanserver,
lanmanworkstation, Netman, Nla, RasMan,
TapiSrv, Themes, TrkWks, W32Time, winmgmt,
wscsvc, wuauserv, WZCSVC

svchost.exe 1356 Dnscache

svchost.exe 1444 LmHosts, RemoteRegistry, SSDPSRV, WebClient

svchost.exe 1920 stisvc

 

i would try disabling start up programs and see if that helps. From run line /msconfig and go to startup tab.