system tray will not load

[brentconn]

I have installed XP home on a new build. I have been testing it for about a day. The strangest thing happened several times on a reboot and possibly on a cold boot too. After th XP splash screen disappears and the desktop appears, the OS seems to hang up and the system tray at the bottom does not load! The cursor will move around on the desktop but if you drop the cursor to the bottom of the screen ie: launch bar, sys tray, the hourglass appears . I don't think this is a HD issue since everything else loaded. I can reboot and everything is fine. This is an intermittent problem. Any ideas?

no additional software is loaded except norton systemworks 2002

[snix]

Could be a case of bad RAM. Test each stick one at a time by removing one and then see if that clears up the problem.

[Statica]

What do you have set to display on the systray; try to disable all programs that might have an icon set to come up on your systray .. things like the Soundblaster Live! icon or any firewall/antivirus ... try disabling it all - not just disabling the systray icon but the program itself, if you can get the system to start up with just the Windows messenger and time, then try re-enabling the programs one at a time. When I started on XP, the SBLive drivers were buggy and I would have issues with it.

[brentconn]

I think I found the problem. I installed the VIA chipset drivers that came with my MB( 4in1 drivers), ignoring the advice of crickett here on PCMECH. XP standard drivers seem to work much better and the bootup has had no problems so far, plus it is faster. Crickett, if you were right on this one, I will worship your advice from now on. I will keep monitoring PC and see what's up.
Thanks all!