Just want to make sure, since it was a fresh installation on a new HD, that you are absolutely certain that all drivers are in place.
I just put in a new hard drive, installed Windows XPSP3 on a generic computer and loaded a number of software programs that I have used in the past. When I right click on a desktop icon the computer freezes, that is the hour glass figure comes up and stays on. Ctrl-alt-del shows no tasks running and the only way to get out of this is to do a physical turn off of the computer. I thought maybe if I went to system restore and tried to go through that process it might take care of the problem, only system restore says there is no restore date. Just installed the system and programs yesterday. There is no real reason to right click the icon except that sometimes I do that and then click open rather than double click with the right mouse button.

Chowhound
Comic Vine
GameFAQs
GameSpot
Giant Bomb
TechRepublic