I have a 2 gig Pentium 4 computer running Windows XP pro and When I turned it on today it booted up as normal but none of my programs will work? When I click on one of the icons it just shows the hour glass for a couple of seconds and then does nothing. The HARD drive light seems to stay on while this is happening but nothing else happens? I have tried using system restore with the same result, hour glass and nothing? Can anyone help me or do I have to restore windows? Thanks. What about Safe Mode?It is the same, boots up but no programs open again.This might also be the time to ask:
Do you have updated antivirus, and antispyware/adware protection on your computer?

Did you upgrade to Service Pack 3?I am running AVG ANTI virus and have Zone alarm FIREWALL but did not update to SP3. Did you reboot?? Try that and if not working, it might be becuase if your computer is really slow when opening the programs, you're probably trying to execute the program again, before it is open so it is trying to open more than one at a time. This happened for me and if I just go to task manager and exit all the duplicate processes and open it again, and WAIT, be patient, and see if it opens!!

Worked for me so hopefully I helped. But zylstra is smarter than me, so if I'm wrong, do whatever she SAYS lol.Maybe Windows REPAIR: http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm