It took me a while to realize that the reason the "make this folder private" checkbox was greyed out was that the folder was on a FAT32 drive. XP-Pro had been working like a charm since day one. I then proceeded to format my F: drive as NTFS. The problem was now to move the "my documents" folder there, while maintaining it's special status in the system. The help file mentions a "folder redirection" setting that is supposedly present in the "group policies" for that purpose. But that setting is nowhere to be found. The solution is much simpler: right-click on the "Documents" folder, just above "My Computer" in Explorer. There is a "move folder" button. hehe!! simple enough! And that's when everything started going wrong. I had C:, D: and E: as Fat32, and F: as NTFS. The computer unexpectedly rebooted. Upon restarting, it checked the c: drive, found errors and corrected them. It then rebooted from the welcome screen. Or it would allow me to enter my password, and would reboot seconds later. Not a single startup option (safe mode, last good configuration, etc) worked. It took me a whole day to reinstall XP, which did not work, reinstall W98SE, which worked. Only then did XP accept to load from the last good configuration. It loaded with all services stopped. The only way I found to avoid these problems is to put "my documents" back on a FAT32 drive, and leave the NTFS drive alone. Now, the only problem is an occasional shutdown of IE with the message "Internet Explorer has encountered a problem and needs to close. We are sorry for the inconvenience.". I don't complain, as I had the problem before too. I'm still curious about this problem. I DO want to have private folders. This is the main reason I switched to XP. How can I have a NTFS drive that works???? FYI, I got several kinds of messages on BSD's after the computer rebooted : - one had to do with NTFS.SYS - one said something like "page fault in unpaged area" (?). My friend told me I might have a memory problem, but why would it appear only in those circumstances? btw, my memory came with the computer. I did not mix different types... Thanks for any info

It sounds to me that your XP installation is pretty bad right now. If I were you I'd make a clean installation from scratch. Forget about win9x...do a new diskpartition if possible and install over. Make a C: partition at least 2 Gb. I would say 3-4 Gb and make it NTFS. Then make one big partition from the rest of the disk(s) unless you'll need more partitons - also using NTFS. It doesn't sound as if you have a RAM problem to me. 128 Mb should do but 256 Mb or more will perform much better... Hope this helps a bit...

Thanks for the reply, but even a fresh install did not work. I formatted an NTFS partition and proceeded to install XP on it. The installation process created a "windows" directory at the root as well as a bunch of subdirectories, and then crashed with a BSD saying the following: =============== a problem was detected and windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer. If this is the first time you've seen this Stop error screen, restart your computer. If this screen appears again, follow these steps: Check to be sure that you have adequate disk space. If a driver is identified in the Stop message, disable it or check with the manufacturer for driver updates. Try changing the video adapter. Check with your hardware vendor for any BIOS updates. Disable BIOS memory options such as caching or shadowing. If you need to use Safe Mode to remove or disable components, restart your computer, bla bla bla... Technical information: ***STOP: 0x0000008E (0xC000001D, 0X0010003, 0XFC0BDFB8, 0X00000000) ============================= I tried a different video adapter, disabled all BIOS shadowing and caching, got and installed the latest BIOS firmware. I'm now at a loss... Should I change the memory? Could it be a problem with the motherboard? (Abit VT6X4) Thanks again for any advice.