thanks, that worked like magic. Turns out it was some sort of HP **** I had, I think from installing a printer when I was at a friends house a few months ago
I ran msconfig, realized what it was, found it, uninstalled it, and further used msconfig to disable the following startups:
quicktime, adobe photo, msn messenger (even though I told it not to start at startup, something still starts up), a couple of other things
is this okay to keep them like that?