Just did a fresh reformat of C: drive. Everything OK until this evening. As soon as the windows loads, the desktop shows for a split second then windows explorer opens a window [C:\WINDOWS\System32]. This happens only in the beginning but it's rather annoying.

Restarted it a couple of times hoping to get rid of it, to no avail. Is there a remedy to this?

Cheers!

its just a dos window flashing up - its either a program or service starting on windows loggon - you can check to see if theres anything in your startup folder:

C:\Docs & Settings\All Users\Start Menu\Programs\Start Up

If nothing in there then i would back track to what programs and drivers you have installed since rebuilding your PC

Sounds like a program on another drive (D?) is trying to access a file in the system 32 folder of drive C. If you've reformatted the drive, then it's now missing.

Sounds like a program on another drive (D?) is trying to access a file in the system 32 folder of drive C. If you've reformatted the drive, then it's now missing.

probably right Geoff. But how do I track which program it is?

I had this same problem everytime I rebooted my WinXP MCE. Annoying as h*ll, and started appearing soon after Norton intercepted a virus that entered my system after playing a video with RealPlayer. Periodically Norton would intercept this same virus again and again, and supposedly quarantine it (which may not be the same as removing it).

This virus possibly explains why the system32 folder was opening up during startup. BTW, Norton did not intercept the virus during startup; it did it at random times, when I was online, and in each subsequent time it was not because I was using RealPlayer; I was merely browsing the web. As for RealPlayer, well I uninstalled that POS.

Anyhow, the system32 problem persisted, and therefore I gave up. I reformatted and then reinstalled WinXP MCE onto my C: drive, and reformatted my D: drive. I had to reinstall all of the latest drivers and apps that I use, and now everything is back to normal.

Fortunately I had a backup of some apps and of course all of my worthwhile data on an external drive. This drive was not infected by the virus because I hadn't hooked it up to the computer during the period of infection.

If you encounter such viruses, make a note of the name of the virus and search for removal tools/instructions. For most virus which manage to get thru anti viruses, there are detailed instructions available on the web on how to get rid of them completely.

Sounds like a program on another drive (D?) is trying to access a file in the system 32 folder of drive C. If you've reformatted the drive, then it's now missing.

probably right Geoff. But how do I track which program it is?

Is there no hint as to which file is trying to be accessed - extension letters etc?

I had a similar problem a couple of years ago and had to reinstall all my prog's one at a time untill the problem went away....painfull I'd installed software on D, so as to make it easy if I needed to reformat and reinstall XP....I was still learning then (still am come to think about it!). This ploy doesn't work because of files written to the system 32 folder in C.

Have fun.