Thanks Ed, I will try all of this.


>This is usually a problem with a corrupted segment in the registry; normally, it's a binary entry whose size value is squirrelly. This is one of several problems that Microsoft's REGCLEAN utility cleans up nicely; you can download it from Microsoft's dowload site http://www.microsoft.com/msdownload/default.htm (or any of a dozen or two reliable other sites; one that I use for stuff like this is http://www.cmpnet.com/itpro/iwk/main). Make certain to get version 4.1a or later - earlier versions, especially 4.0 and 4.1 (no 'a') caused more problems than they fixed.
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>There are other possible problems; too many entries in the root directory is the other common one I've seen. If you have -tons- of files in the root directory of your hard drive, try moving or deleting some of them; there is a maximum number of file entries in the root directory of a drive, which depends on the partition type and cluster size.
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>Finally, if you haven't done so in a while, run SCANDISK in thorough mode against the drive; a physical defect in the root directory of a drive can be troublesome, too, as can vast numbers of lost clusters or corrupted FAT tables. After running SCANDISK, defrag the drive, too. The defrag isn't likely to fix anything by itself, but you'll find that the system runs faster with a defragmented drive and file access times are noticably improved.