when my computer starts up and the desktop shows there is always a window showing drive C, is there a way of disabling this?

Ya, checkout in Startup. It might have a shorcut for "Explorer.exe c:\" If it is not there open up msconfig and check out in that. And remove that entry.

Also (while in msconfig) as well as checking the startup tab settings, check the win.ini tab, expand the Windows section (click on the + sign) and check the Load= and Run= lines. They should be (normally) empty after the equals sign.

Try this fix from Microsoft: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;EN-US;q228502

thanks, the fix from the microsoft site worked thanks. they suggested to delete a certain registry key but i'm paranoid about deleting parts of my registry so i set the value from (1) to (0) for that key.

That is a very safe choice...I'm glad, it worked.