Just for the heck of it, how many icons do you have in your tray?

I've only got 8 in the tray. It's not a resources issue.

You don't think eight is a lot? Depending on what they are, that could be all of your memory right there, forcing everything else to run on disk-caching. I have 1G memory, and I think four is a lot.

Here they are:

Microsoft anti-spyware.
Trend Micro PC-Cillin
Printer select
Dell support
Windows Messenger
Quick Time
NVIDIA settings
Volume

I'd like to get rid of Dell support, Windows Messenger, Quick time, and NVIDIA settings.

You might be right..........I don't know the usage by the group of them.

I'll second Ron's suggestion of familiarizing yourself with some sort of disk image utility and using it BEFORE you perform a fresh install. It gives you the opportunity to return your system to its current (non-optimal, but functioning) state if you run into some serious unexpected problems.

Of course, things will go swimmingly with your fresh install. Then you can make an image of your sweet, fresh installation. After that, you can make a new image once in a while, if you wish, as part of a disaster recovery plan.

I don't have extensive experience with it, but I'm using Acronis True Image 9.0 for this. The downloadable version of it (the real thing, just not mailed to you on a disk) is $30. After setting up two systems not that long ago (and then doing one all over again after a hard disk failure), I decided that it was foolish not to be using something like this.

It's a godsend, isn't it? It pays for itself ten times over the first time you need it. And it's so easy to restore any time your system starts acting a little squirrely...

So, if you have the image on a backup drive, it's a simple process to restore the image to the main drive and delete everything that is currently on the main drive?

I've got a very nice 80GB external drive that seems to do a great job for backups.

It takes about twenty minutes to restore to the exact situation you had when you saved the image. It basically wipes your drive clean and restores the image in one fell swoop. Just backup critical data files before your restore, so you don't lose anything in the process. I have two physical hard drives on my desktops, just for that purpose. I also keep an image of my laptop on a secondary drive on one of my desktops.

Wow, that's a very good setup.

Amazing the length that we need to go to simply keep Windows running properly.

You would think that somebody would have a utility that could fix the registry properly..........assuming that it's the problem.

Well, I was a professional software reviewer/writer for a few years. I needed to be able to restore to a pristine setup at the snap of my fingers at times, so I developed computer habits that would keep me working, no matter how awful the destructive, piece of crap software I just tried to run was. The only stuff that used to really unnerve me sometimes was certain types of untested security utilities.

Can you direct me to a reinstall procedure that I can trust?

I see the need to finally do this and to then do the drive image, as you mentioned.

1. Purchase a ghost utility. I prefer PowerQuest Drive Image.
2. Save an image, and even do a restore just to gain comfort with it.
3. Install Windows --fresh install, don't reinstall -- the CD will give you the choice. If there is no significant speed difference afterwords, do a restore. If there is, start reinstalling everything. Keep your old Windows folder around for a few weeks until you're sure you have everything you want. Once everything is exactly how you want it and it's running fast and rock solid, save a fresh image.

I only started using a dedicated disk image utility fairly recently, but I'm not a stranger to the concept. Back when I was running OS/2, I used to run a Boot Manager setup and keep a small bootable "maintenance partition" with a bare-bones operating system and tape backup software on it. That way I could back up my entire regular partition to a 4 mm DAT drive. It took a lot of the sting out of trying beta versions of the OS. It very much saved my bacon from a hard disk failure once, too.

I haven't had to recover from a disaster to put it to the test yet, but Acronis True Image 9.0 was certainly straightforward to use to make the images. One feature that I thought was fairly nifty is that it can also mount image files temporarily as logical drives, so one can poke around in and access files from an image without actually restoring it. That may only be impressive to me because I'm not familiar with the other products out there!

Have you tried just dumping FF totally and I mean totally! and do a fresh install! You may have a bad file in the program. JMO

Smokie

__________________
95 E420 BigBlue
500E Sway bars
2001 C Class 16 in. Rims
KYB Struts and shocks
Rear spoiler
American Stitches Wheel
Bigred 99 F250 Powerstroke
JVC EXAD Mp3 player
JVC EXAD GPS

I think I'll give that a try. You never know.............