I have experienced that Eclipse hangs when I am trying to start it. I have figured out that this is due to a problem with my workspace. If you have the same issue you can try the following.

First open your task manager –> right click the javaw.exe process –> chose to end process tree (this will end all java processes running on your computer).

Then go to your Eclipse folder –> configuration\.settings and delete the org.eclipse.ui.ide.prefs file. Restart Eclipse and try opening your workspace again. This does the trick for me Beaware that deleting this file results in resetting your workspace history so when starting Eclipse you need to manually browse to your workspace location.

I have only experienced this issue when I am running Eclipse in my Windows XP image with a third party plug-in for Eclipse.