[akakie]

Thanks for the suggestions. Alas, neither solved the problem.

System restore politely told me it couldn't restore from that checkpoint -- probably too old.

SFC paused occasionally to complain that I didn't have the right system disk in place, but proceeded when I clicked retry. It completed, but had no apparent effect.

Any other ideas?

BTW, I saw the same problem reported on windows-help, but without an answer. At least I'm not alone.

Akakie