Someone suggested this: A tweaking/icon changing tool: "More Properties" It was not XP approved and it gave error messages right away and drove my CPU up 100% instantly upon clicking on it - not to mention it ran my fan at full bore. This person said to ignore the error messages - they use it all the time with XP. I don't know if this had anything to do with my probs. now but I got rid of it. So we'll see.