On your first connection, leave your computer for at least 2 hours to see if it ever loads. Ignore any \'not responding\' messages and do not alt+tab or touch any keys while it\'s loading. This will only happen on your first connection, so don\'t worry.
If it still doesn\'t load, you may not have enough RAM. Especially since you\'re running WinXP which is a RAM hogger, 256mb is quite low.