My hunch is that your problem is not a Xara or a Windows problem. I think it might be caused by some third party bit of software installed on your machine which is trying to do something at intervals in the background while Xara Designer is starting up.

That would explain why it doesn't happen every time, why other people can't duplicate the problem and why Handrawn's version of the problem disappeared when he rebuilt his system.

Find out what programs and services are run when Windows starts up, remove all those that you don't want (there are always some!) and, of the remaining ones that you do want, temporarily stop them one by one and test Designer's startup behaviour until the problem is fixed.

Phil