>But in my case, at least I was positive it was not a hardware problem since I had identical machines without the problem. But in your case...well, if it *is* a hardware problem, you're pretty much up the creek trying to solve it, without additional identical Acers to test with.

I've ruled out hardware as the problem. Two Acers have the problem as well a desktop pc. They are the only pcs running WinXP in our dept. The rest run NT. Of course the NT machines all work perfectly. Even though
- netware client
- WinXP itself

The Netware client is the same version on NT and XP, and it is only one install from Novell, but the XP clients could be configured incorrectly. A visual inspection shows them as being configured the same.

At least now a support desktop PC has the problem, vs our unsupport Acers, which means our IS dept must now address the problem.