iTunes freezes 3-5 seconds after launching and goes into not responding mod

Hello. Everything was working fine until yesterday when my iTunes decided to freeze 3-5 seconds after i attempted to access it. You can move around in the playlist for those 3-5 seconds before it freezes. I get no error message, but in the task manager it reads "not responding." Everything else on my computer works fine, even while iTunes is frozen (although sometimes the cursor will not go all the way to the menu bar when iTunes has frozen). I initially tried restarting the computer over and over again with no luck.

I called Apple customer support and they had never heard of this problem (despite several posts i found on this discussion forum (with no solutions)). They had me try a few minor things on the phone, shutting off this and choosing repair for that, all to no avail. They then advised me to uninstall iTunes and quicktime which i did, then reinstalling both. Still no luck. I then installed the quicktime independent stand alone player. Still no luck. I then went to MSConfig and disabled everything per Apple's suggestion. Still no luck. I've now tried all of the recommendations on Apple's troubleshooting guide.

Has anyone been able to solve this problem?