Well, rik, here is what I did and here is what happened. A bit long; please bear with me.

First, I tried going back about 12 days--this was not before the last Windows update but if it worked, it would mean fewer programs to reinstall. I figured Help and Support might have been screwed up in those 12 days. After the restore I clicked Start > Help and Support and, as before, the entire Start screen vanished. Message: "Windows can't open Help and Support as a system service is not running. To fix, start the service called Help and Support." So I went to services and Help and Support had no status. So I started it up. This time I got the message: "Could not start on local computer. Error 1083. The executable program that this service is configured to run in does not implement the service."

Now, per your suggestion to restore back before the last Windows update installs, I went back further. I found I installed Win XP KB840374 and Windows Update V4 on May 11. The 10th. of May showed only a system checkpoint so I restored things to that date.

After the restore and reboot Windows Updates had updates waiting for me. I did not install any but went instead to Windows Update to see what they had. It was XP KB 840374. I did not install it but went to services on my computer to see if Help and Support needed starting up. Well, Help and Support was simply not there. I closed out of there and tried clicking Start > Help and Support and got what I expected, viz: "Windows can't open Help and Support as a system service is not running. To fix, start service named Help and Support."

Now if I go back further I find that on May 8 I installed 11 XP updates plus the Windows V4 update and Service Pack 1. The Restore points do not go back beyond the May 8th group.

So I guess I should reinstall Service Pack 1 (which takes forever--literally--it takes a full hour to install every time (3 of them) I've done it and sometimes it screws up too and I start in all over again.) If you agree and say "Yes, push has come to shove" do I need to uninstall SP 1 and those 11 updates before I reinstall them? And do I do that from Add-Remove or how?.

wumply