E1705 Hangs at Desktop

I received an E1705 from Dell on July 5th, and it has been running great since then. The specs are as follows:

T2300 Dual-Core Processor (1.83ghz)
2x1024MB DDR2 RAM @ 533mhz
80 GB HDD @ 5200RPM
GeForce nVIDIA 7900 GS
Audigy HD Software Upgrade

Those are the basic specs I can think of off the top of my head at the moment.

Sometime last week, I'd start the computer and it would hang at the desktop. No icons would load, no start bar, no "busy, time glass" mouse, nothing; just the background image. I could move the mouse around fine and everything. I can hit CTRL + ALT + DELETE and browse the processes running, but can't do anything else besides shut it down by holding the power button. I thought this was just a one-time deal, but it has been increasing in frequency until now. I booted the laptop up four times, and it has now done it every time. I've been using Symantec Firewall + Virus Scan, as well as 3rd party programs to fix missing registry files and clean spyware.

I really don't know what to do to fix the issue, or what could be causing it. Any help is greatly appreciated!

 

Not sure -

Check Device Manager for any Yellow Exclamation marks (missing drivers).

Run MEMTEST (for several hours) to check for bad RAM.

 

Did you recently install an antivirus? To me, it sounds like your system is loading up several programs at once on boot up or your a/v is doing a virus check.

Have you reformatted your laptop? If not, you probably have a ton of junkware on your laptop and this might be contributing to the problem. You can turn off some of the programs so they won't start. Goto start-->run-->type MSCONFIG--> go to last tab-->uncheck any software that you do not need all the time.

How many processess do you have running in your task manager when you do the ctrl alt del?

 

My vaio does that... nobody knows why.. somethines it will do it, sometimes it won't...

 

never hurts to just reformat unless you have a lot of info on it that you wanna keep. if you reformat and it still dosent work call delll mat be a bad sector on th HD

 

I think I've narrowed it down.

It doesn't start when I have my ethernet cable plugged into the back that hooks the computer upto the local network in my house. Is this typical, or is it some sort of problem?

 

My guess would be either you have a wireless network and it is trying and failing to connect, or the wireless network adapter and the ethernet adapter are conflicting.