Vista - start menu locks after typing 2 characters in seach field

This started happening all of the sudden:

When I press the start menu and type in a search term ("services" for
example), after typing "se" the hard drive starts rumbling and the start
menu locks up for 10 seconds before results start appearing. This did not
used to happen. I can access programs behind the start menu during this 10
second period, but not the actual start menu.

I tried re-doing the index (using a registry change tip specified in another
post here) with no luck.

Thanks,
Troy