XP Professional Problem after network login

[peteb]

XP Pro up to date with service packs
intel pentium 4 1.6ghz
512 MB of Ram
running norton anti-virus corporate edition

boots to network login prompt without a problem, after logging in successfully the screen shows the desktop (no icons or taskbar, just the desktop picture) and it hangs there, I've let it stay in that state for 20 minutes and still nothing. I did discover that if I pushed the esc button the desktop then loads and the OS runs as normal.

So now, when I log in and the blank desktop appears I just hit the esc button and I am fine.

I haven't done anything to the system (hardware or software) over this period of time.

I checked the event logs for system, security, and application and there is nothing there that indicates a problem of any type.

Does this sound familiar to anyone?

[njovin]

I would hit ctl+shift+esc while it is hung up, and go to the processes tab. If you can take a screenshot of that and post it here we might be able to tell if something funny is running.

[peteb]

njovin,

I tried this several times and no process window. I hit ESC as I described above and the process window is the first thing I see. Here is a screen shot of it.



all of the stuff that begins with pi, like pitotal.exe, pisqlss.exe etc are processes that I am familiar with and they have been on the machine before this started happening.