Thanks to all the people who answered my original post- hadn't been able to get back here so soon and it got buried. Booting up to find a dead desktop seems to have been a pretty consistent problem on my machine- with the original 128 MB RAM as well as with the two upgrades since- to 256 and 512. The suggestion that it's a virus I don't belive is valid because I swapped hard drives to eliminate that possibility. I've even swapped memory cards thinking "Maybe..." I'm grasping at straws at this point- anyone else have any ideas on this one? 1.2G HP 7950 Athlon, 512MB RAM

What about the program shortcuts on the Start Menu / Programs ? If nothing runs from a shortcut, then I'd say your exefile entries in the registry have become corrupt. I'll email you a *.reg file, that might do the trick, by restoring exefile functions in the registry.