Hi again..
It appears that I am cursed... I just gotmy XP pro machine back and running on a fresh install and reinstalled all my software and it was running perfectly... then i went to upgrade from a Nvidia FX 5200 card to an ATI all in wonder 2006 edition card.. i uninstalled the Nvidia drivers then turned off the machine, pulled the old card and installed the new one... rebooted.. windows came up fine, however windows didnt immediatly detect the new card.. then the system froze with no errors... just hung... i rebooted and i got message, "hal.dll is missing"
why would a video card delete very fragile windows files??
im still cursed..
JC