Hi All,

Evan, thanks for the greatly detailed response. Unfortunately, I'm in no position to try most of what you suggest, mainly because the only CD/DVD writer I have is on the bad system. Also the bad system has SATA drives an both of my others don't.

Mike, I can't even get into safe mode to do a virus check. Also, the boot sequence reports that C: (a RAID) is operational.

Neil, it **may** be the virus checker itself. On my alternate system (Win 2K), where I'm writing this, I started up from hibernate just fine. Then I heard my virusd cheecker (AVAST!) report that it had updated the system. Then I tried starting Outlook, but it wouldn't. Same for IE. Tried to do Task Mamanger and the sytart bar went blue (and blank) and no manner of clicking would 'do' anything. For instance, a rt-click on the desktop broughht up the dialog, but clicking "Properties" gave no dialog for the display. HOWEVER, a (cold) re-boot did let me re-start OK and now all things appear normal (though oddly the virus software did report again that it had updated itself).
I'm going to try contacting them to see if they've seen similar.

cheers

>It could be a hard drive problem, and it also sounds like it could be a virus. Have you tried booting in safe mode and running a virus check?