Win XP Home - New System - System Tray / Task Bar Hangs for few minutes at startup

Win XP Home - New System - System Tray / Task Bar Hangs for few minutes at startup

Hey guys i have been having a problem with the windows task bar and system tray hanging ( basically when i put cursor over them it shows the hour glass )
Everything else works at start up ( like i can launch things and start apps ) but theres no using the bar. Any commands i input get executed a few minutes later and its then responsive. This is a new PC ( my first build ) and this wasn't doing this after i had the updates and windows all installs which leads me to belive something may be conflicting ( a bad driver or such ) Win XP is fully updated as well as the bios and chipset drivers. I also networked my PCs through a linksys router now that i have mine and the family PC. Here is what my PC is running.

Windows XP HOME
DFI NF4 Lanyparty SLI-DRI
AMD X2 3800+ DUAL CORE
OCZ 1024MB PC3200 Premier Dual Channel Kit ( in the yellow dimm slots # 3 and 4)
300GIG Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 NCQ in SATA port 1
Creative Xfi Xtreme Music in bottom pci port
Enermax Noisetaker 420watt

I am currently using a 1MB VGA pci card but have a BFG TECH 7800gt on layaway but i get a picture he he ( 800x600 16bit color )

Ive read posts here and various guides for the last couple months and talked to many people and i feel fairly confident things are all setup right. As i said this is my first attempt and building a PC and i can say Ive enjoyed the experience thus far. This hanging wasn't happening until about yesterday.
Since this could be a broad number of things and this is my first time building a PC i thought id just tell you as much as i can now so someone who may know were i should start wont need to ask too many questions. This motherboard also has firewall built in but i have it disabled for the time been for networking and printer sharing purposes. I have no plans to overclock now
(dont even know what this baby can do still need that video card) but dont plan on doing so until i get a 2x1gig kit of the ocz platinum el which is better suited for overclocking from what i been told plus 2 gig of seems to be appreciated with games such as BF2 and FEAR which i intend on playing.

I am running around 38 or so processes including the stuff for the xfi
(just the basic stuff no extra bloatware.) I also purchased a Xbox 360 controller and am using Pinnacle Game Profiler. For virus protection I'm using AVG free edition and have spyboard search and destroy, ad aware SE and spyware blaster. Sorry if this was posted in the wrong section but being such a broad thing thought this would be the best place. Thanks Chickenfeed

1. Check Event Viewer. You could have an app that is hanging on startup
2. Run MSConfig and uncheck some of the unnecessary items. If you're not really sure, just uncheck one thing at a time and reboot, making sure that your system is still functioning with the item not loading on startup. Trial and error, very tedious but sometimes necessary.
3. The next time you get the long pause, do a ctrl-alt-del and get task manager to open up. Then in the Processes tab, find "explorer.exe", end the task, then go to File -> New Task, and type in "explorer".

Thanks. All i had to disable really was the quicktime one and adobe reader. I also used the microsoft boot vis utility which sped start up greatly although i still get pause. I reinstalled motherboard driver but this time didn't bother with the motherboard firewall as it conflicted with the network. This greatly cut down on processes (around 30) now and leaves me with 50MB more of free system ram.
After doing a test on boot vis i did an optimize. It now reaches desktop in around 20 seconds and is seems OK after 10 but the bar still freezes for another 40 seconds. I control-alt-deleted and sorted the processes by name so i could see which one was added later ( because i noticed later after pause i have 1 or 2 more processes. It seems to be this alg.exe. As i said i had just networked these PC to allow printer sharing.
A search on google for that exe reveals that its a local service pertaining to the file and internet connection sharing.
Heres what google came up with;
http://www.liutilities.com/products/wintaskspro/processlibrary/alg/

http://www.neuber.com/taskmanager/process/alg.exe.html

I haven't verify ed this but the other networked PC wasn't currently on just now and could it be its hanging because it doesn't see it?