Dear friends: Thanks to the very special troubleshooting help of Jose M. Sanchez and Ramon Gandia, I was finally able to isolate the problem. It turns out that I needed to change the IRQ's for 3,4,5,7, 12 to Legacy ISA. I also moved my modem to com2 and installed a new Microsoft PS/2-serial mouse with a SINGLE LONG CORD as a SERIAL mouse on com 1. It seems to have done the trick. I have tested it by rebooting a good number of times, using many applications, etc. and everything at last is back to normal. My thanks again to Jose and Ramon. I spent the entire weekend trying to figure this out and was about to pull my hair out. Thanks to everyone else who wrote it, too. Benjamin -- Benjamin and Anna Sher [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sher's Russian Web http://www.websher.net