for example on my pc, I have secunia psi installed and the desktop loads but it takes a good 20 second before the hour glass is gone from cursor because secunia is scanning pc because I have it set to load at start up.
Autoruns will show what is starting when you turn on your pc, the less you have starting the better. It would be best to test by turning off half of the non microsoft items you have starting and see if the error persists, if it is still there, then turn on that half and turn off the other half, restart and see if the error persists, if it is not then you know that within that group is a startup item that is causing the freeze, and by process of elimination you can find out which one it is.
Autoruns will show what is starting when you turn on your pc, the less you have starting the better. It would be best to test by turning off half of the non microsoft items you have starting and see if the error persists, if it is still there, then turn on that half and turn off the other half, restart and see if the error persists, if it is not then you know that within that group is a startup item that is causing the freeze, and by process of elimination you can find out which one it is.