so i usually run my comp on for weeks at a time, and i had just updated 3 of my programs, Mcaffee, Internet Download Manager, and a Windows Automatic Update for media player... i then Restarted my computer, and during the restart flipped off my monitor and went to bed, i woke and to my dismay, when i turned my monitor on, all that was on my desktop was my main image, no taskbar or icons, i IMMEDIATELY ctrl+o to see if i could open anything...no luck, i could ctrl.+alt.+del. and do those things, and i restarted, i found that after my XP got done with te bar thing, it froze on the part that says "Windows is starting up" after about 3 minutes there is ONE BEEP and then goes to my desktop with nothing else....i think it may be a faulty hard drive, but i cant imagine me getting that far on a bad disk.... anyway, my specs are as follows... WD 80 gig special edition w/ 1 20 gig partition Epox 8K5a2+ mobo w/ raid XP 2500+ Barton Overclocked to 2.3 ghz 2x 256 mb PC 2700 DDR ram Asus Video suite Ti4200+ 128mb dual DVI out i cant imagine what the problem could be...please help!

so what you did was to reinstall xp, right? and after you reinstall it didn't work, right? John Paul Phillips

NO i didnt reinstall anything!! thats the thing, you know how whenever sometimes XP does the auto download update it says that to complete it you must reboot your PC? thats all i did, i didnt reinstall the OS or anything...

Can be a virus, or some conflict with the windows updates, after upgrading to a new SP, many trouble with 3rd party software can happen... check well, try using system restore... hope this helps

Hey go into Safe Mode. Do a system restore, will fix it. V. Satya Ramachandran For more help : satya_ramachandran@adp.com Include problem link in mail