Hello.. Couple of days back my Win2k didn't shutdown properly. Upon next bootup, it refused to show system icons (e.g. for folders, file types etc.). It was showing black boxes in place of them so I repaired win2k using the installation CD. With the repair, the icon problem got repaired but another very annoying problem started.. Now what is happening is that whenever I run any Microsoft thing (MS office stuff, outlook, Visual Studio etc.) this Windows Installer (Preparing to install windows) dialog box pops up. It also pops up when I install or uninstall anything and at windows startup etc. It stays there for a couple of seconds and then goes away. I believe everything is working perfectly fine and nothing needs to be installed or anything. This is very annoying esp. for IE and Outlook which I open and close virtually every 2 minutes.. Can anyone please help me get rid of this problem? Thanks Regds - Ali

Any by the way.. I did try to edit the Windows installer properties through the gpedit.msc command and set it to ENABLED->ALWAYS DISABLE but this didn't solve the problem