PC Hangs on Startup

I have been using ESS since it first went public beta, and everything has been running smoothly. I recently installed the latest version of ESS and no problems up until yesterday. When I boot up the PC the ESS banner will show (as it normally does on startup), but now it seems to hang, and it causes my PC to pretty much come to a halt. It does not freeze it completely, but I cannot stop processes, open programs, etc. So I boot into Safe Mode (which I am currently on), and I try to uninstall ESS...Oops! Windows Installer doesn't work in Safe Mode. So now I am at a stopping point. Below is the current system info:

OS: Windows Vista Business 32 bit.
RAM: 2 GB
ESS version: v3.0.290.0, 16.4MB, English