Hello, I am having a problem with my PC booting up. The computer is about 6 years old and runs off Windows ME o/s. When the computer boots up, my desktop will load, but the icons or start menu never appear and I'm left with just my blank wallpaper. Hitting ctrl-alt-del shows no other programs running once I have logged-in to windows, however, right before I log-in it shows a program running called "cmdninst.exe." I've read this is a Microsoft device manager and may cause problems during boot up due to device drivers being outdated. I have loaded no new hardware/software on my computer in the last 6-7 months. Unfortunately, since the computer is so old, I also have misplaced the boot disk and am unable to load from that. Is there any way to bypass this cmdninst file and get my desktop to re-appear? Any help you could provide would be great! Thank you.

Try safe mode and use msconfig to limit startup items - hitting F8 as the machine powers up will provide you with a menu "have misplaced the boot disk" So? There are numerous sites that provide a free download of diskette boot images, easily found - of course, the bootdisk will only let you start in DOS mode y'know I'm not one of those who think Bill Gates is the devil. I simply suspect that if Microsoft ever met up with the devil, it wouldn't need an interpreter.