The only reason I got a bit slack on my machine was for these very reasons - strange, altered behavior, slow bootups, shutdowns, etc. My development box gets fragile enough just thrugh my own work. The IE 5.5 SP2 was a nightmare - 3 apps busted because of it. I put a little too much faith in my firewall and virus scanner box. Adding the DSL router was the last straw, so to speak. Welcome to broadband :-)

>Not to mention the strange things that randomly happen after some patch is installed.
>Just yesterday a buddy needed to install ".NET Framework Runtime" for some Flight Sim add-on. Now some prior patch had messed up his "Windows Update" such that he gets an "ActiveX unauthorized..." error whenever Windows Update tries to run the "search for updates". So he asked me to download it for him. I did, and sent it off to him and he installed it. Now, after any boot he gets something he NEVER had before - the standard Windows startup "login" screen and he has to click his (and the only) icon to get things running. Yet it never shows up when the screen saver has kicked in or any other time. Just another one of those mysterious MS things that people seem to expect and ACCEPT!!!
>
>cheers