Opening Look-in slow in apps...

I have a question regarding the performance of the 'Look in' Drop Down when
you select File|Open in i.e. MS Word, Excel, etc. Specifically, it takes
about 30 seconds to display the Drop Down each time you click it. A few
months back this problem started and I'm not sure how to resove it so I
thought I'd give this a try.

I'm using Windows XP Home edition and someone told me to delete ALL
shares/Network Shares, which I did and the problem still persists. (FYI: I do
have a Windows 2003 Server running that I connect to via a WORKGROUP)

From the Windows 'Event Viewer' in 'System' error section, it is the 'The
Windows Image Acquisition (WIA)' service that is having problems starting. I
tried to start it manually from the 'Services' window and it WON'T start
there either (the path to the executable is: C:\WINDOWS\system32\svchost.exe
-k imgsvc). The error I get there is: Could not start the Windows Image
Acquisition (WIA) service on Local Computer. Error 1067: The process
terminated unexpectidely.

Here are the relative entries I found in the Windows 'Event Viewer' in
'System' error section:

1) I get a message: The server {A1F4E726-8CF1-11D1-BF92-0060081ED811} did
not register with DCOM within the required timeout. (which points to the
svchost.exe file )

2) then the next line is: The Windows Image Acquisition (WIA) service was
successfully sent a start control.

3) and finally: The Windows Image Acquisition (WIA) service terminated
unexpectedly. It has done this 49 time(s).

The # of times increases each time the 'Look in' is clicked.

There lies my problem: I do NOT have any idea where to begin to fix this. I
checked Microsoft's website regarding this and there does NOT seem to be any
informatoin how to go about correcting this. They have definitions of that
WIA is and what it does, but that's all).

A couple of other points:

1) I have noticed that in the 'Explorer' when I click the right mouse button
and select 'Send To' it also takes about 30 seconds to display the sub-menu.

2) Similarly, in the 'Control Panel' when selecting the 'Scanners and
Cameras', it also takes about 30 seconds to display the sub-menu. Note that
there are NO scanner or camera entries listed here.

3) and finally, When I open up Photoshop, during load, the application also
hangs for about 30 seconds during it's launch and the display shows the
message: 'Building TWAIN Menu Items...'

So, from all of this, I have gathered that for some unknown reason (to me) I
CANNOT launch/start the Windows Image Acquisition (WIA) and it appears that
the procedures described above require this service to be running in order to
stop from timing out after 30 seconds.

I know that that was a lot to take in, but I would really appreciate if
anyone has any valuable input into how I can resolve this issue.

Thanks,

Michael...