Thats certainly not normal.
If ctrl-alt-del isn't working to display the ctrl-alt-del screen then that would typically rule out user apps causing an issue, but as you say removing Start8 made it happy again.
I would recommend contacting [email protected] so they can obtain some more information about your system. A great many people have used Start8 and I don't think we have had other reports of anything like this. If you have any entries in the eventlog that might be useful too.
I assume you were also using v1.1 as thats the latest.