My dvd burner died the other day, and I removed it. It doesn't appear in the Device Manager, since the computer knows that I physically took the drive out and it's no longer there. But now my computer is sluggish. It will start up and sometimes freeze (with only the Windows start button visible and the rest of the screen black in a frozen state). Or, it will start up and the screen will load normally and I have a regular pointer icon over all parts of the screen. But when I hover it over the start menu, it has a round animated circle showing that it's "thinking". My computer has never done that before, and I just did a clean install of windows (reformatted, did all updates, etc.) just the other day, so it can't be some weird error. Did I forget some type of setting before removing the drive?

Eventually, the computer will quit thinking and work normally. Sometimes I have to start it up a couple of times via a cold reboot and forced turnoff if it freezes.

I am also very sure that I do not have any spyware or viruses on my computer.