i had the same problem this morning,did you take notice that the icons by the clock were missing? i had to restart the computer three times to be able to get rid of the hour glass and open aol,

The delay may be caused by the background process that run in XP. See the following links for details and recommended settings:

http://www.3dspotlight.com/tweaks/winxp_services/index.shtml

http://www.blkviper.com/WinXP/servicecfg.htm

I changed a number of my settings from Automatic to Manual and have seen significant improvement in performance.

Not sure that this will resolve your problem, but it's a place to start.