I'm having major probs with my windows ME on bootup. When I boot, I see the Windows ME screen, then it goes to my desktop. It loads some progs (I found out using well-timed cntrl-alt-dlts), and then I see the start bar for a second, then it disappears. Then the running programs just sort of end on their own, and I'm left with a cursor, and a blank desktop. When I cntrl-alt-delete, the only prog running is 'devldr16', but I don't think it has something to do with this. So far, I have tried: 1. scanreg /restore, /fix, no fix 2. running in safe mode, same thing happens, but this time no programs show when I cntrl-alt-dlt. 3. earlier post mentioned finding an 8K file called 'explorer.exe' in my root that is supposed to be malware, but could not find such a file. 4. scandisk, but not a 5-hour surface scan yet..... Some of the progs that are run in normal boot before ending up with just 'devldr16': cmdninst, mstask, msnqmgr... Thank you all for any help, b