Hi BB and Egghead:

Well, problem is solved. QuickRes is gone from my computer. My thanks to you both.

I tried first Egghead's idea and In Task Manager > Processes I found "1stqres.exe". right-clicked and hit 'Delete' and it was gone in a flash. I did a cold reboot just for kicks.

Btw, QuickRes never did get put in Add/Remove. And several times in the attempt to get rid of it, I got the message "file is corrupt." along with all the weird behaviors one gets from a corrupt file.

Had this failed I would have gone to System Restore. I wanted to go Task Manager> Proceses first because I'd never gone that route before, never had even been aware of it. Pretty neat now to have an idea of what to do when I get the message: "Cannot delete (filename). Access is denied. Make sure disc is not full or write-protected and that the file is not currently in use."

I have a very strong suspicion that the basic problem may well have been that QuickRes (even whatever free version I downloaded from Green Parots Software) was not adapted for XP, even though it was suggested in a PCWorld article (p. 212, Dec. 02 issue) FOR Windows XP software.

John