I have no idea why this is happening, as I don't believe anything new has been installed recently, but... Every time I start win2k my machines looks like it's starting up absolutely fine, BUT even though I can open the START menu, AND I can left click on icons on the desktop, I can't run ANYTHING. No program will start. I also can't right click on icons, as nothing will happen. If I hover over an icon the text "labels" will appear over them as usual (forgive my non-techie vocabulary). If I hit Ctrl/Alt/Delete the Security menu/window will appear, but if I try to open the task manager the window just vanishes without the task manager ever appearing. I can select SHUT DOWN or RESTART etc. from the START menu, but it takes a long time as I have to wait for Windows to tell me that several programs are running and need to be shut down. Sometimes I can get internet explorer to start, but it's never able to load a web page. Sometimes it never even appears, but during shutdown I will be told that it is running. During shutdown I am told a few programs are NOT RESPONDING and after awhile I can actually shut the machine down. The things it says are running are explorer, earthlink taskbar, and a few other normal things that don't really seem to have anything to do with the problem...stuff that's been in my task bar forever and has never given me trouble. Also, apparently DR. Watson is trying to do something but can't because I'm frequently told that drwtsn32.exe initialization failed due to the shutdown request. A few times I have gotten messages about rundll.32 during shut down as well, though not always. I can boot up in Safe mode with networking to use the internet. I don't see any hardware conflicts in the device manager when I do this. I had some trouble with my USB cable modem the night that this craziness started, so there may be a connection. The modem lost power and wouldn't work until I unplugged it for awhile. I've actually reinstalled win2k and downloaded all the updates while bouncing back and forth between safe mode and normal, since I can't even get windows updates during a normal startup. I've been at this for over seven hours and I'm about to smash my face through the monitor in frustration. Please. someone help! Thanks in advance.

At this point, if I were you I would format the drive and reinstall win2k from scratch. This may not be the answer you want, but I'm betting it's the quickest route to fixing the problems.

I've heard of a virus that does this. I have no clue what the name is. You may want to search Symantec's virus center.

I think what greg is referring to is the BugBear or Yaha virus. Once infected, it disables your ability to run executables. You need to get to the Registry to aid in the removal, but that doesn't work because regedit.exe is, afterall, an executable. There is a way to get this done, if you're infected, so research it first.

Thanks for the advice! I actually got help emailed to me from Microsoft. It turns out that I had a some bad stuff loading during startup, like spyware from GATOR. I disabled it and everything is fine. Thanks everyone!