I can always tell who is my angel. It's the one who is always wiping the sweat off her brow and saying, "Whew!."

When they stole the car, they jimmied the ignition switch.

All your symptoms are consistent with a defective ignition switch.

Replace the ignition switch.

The operative words here are: ignition switch.

?

Reboot may be a function of heat.
It also may be a defective power supply.

But in your case, you have traced it to corrupted software.
Sometimes other newly-installed programs can interact with the settings of older programs.

SO:

Uninstall the firewall software, if you can.
Re-install it.

If you are lucky, it will re-establish itself.
It is possible that the IM and firewall can not co-exist,
but that is probably not the case.

Looks like you solved your problem.

You might want to read my post on the

Help!!! My Son...

thread, anyway.

At the risk of being obsessive, here is another thing:

The idea here is that Windows may become clogged with multiple obsolete or duplicate drivers, over time.

Re-installing a driver does not necessarily replace the the original (who knew?).

This procedure is a software enema.

Boot up in Safe Mode:
Press the F-8 key at the critical time during startup (experiment - it also may be F-12 for Compac, I think);
select Safe Mode from the menu.

When your desktop appears,
go to the Device Manager as described previously.

Open every folder. Every one, one at a time.

Delete every entry that is a double.
They will be adjacent listings; they are sorted alphabetically.
Delete them BOTH.

Delete every entry that relates to obsolete hardware,
like the printer driver for that old Epson you replaced with the new HP. Or that driver for your old scanner.

If you are not sure about a file, don't delete it!

Shut down.

Re-boot.

Windows will find each piece of hardware and re-install ONE ITERATION of the driver software for it. EXCEPT:

Several instances of those multiple 'Holders' and 'Hubs' you deleted from the last two folders may be required.
Don't worry if Windows installs more than one of them.

Forgot to mention:

Mittens must be installed in pairs, or your son will be able to remove them.

Unlike Windows' memory, a matching pair is not necessary.


Things are not always as simple as they might appear.
You can contact me directly about this computer problem
using <my name> at yahoo (if you wish);
I may be able to walk you through it over the 'phone.

Good luck.

Another way to get there:
Open Control Panel
Click on System
Click on Hardware
Click on Device Manager


If you successfully restore the sound,
you might consider installing protective software.

I recommend 'Mittens,' available at most local clothing stores.

I do not run XP, but this is a generic cure for this problem:

The idea is to delete all the sound drivers.
Windows will detect the sound hardware and re-install the drivers on the next re-boot.

Hopefully.

In Win2K, I do this; it may be the same in XP:

This is a clean wipe, and you don't need to find all the drivers and wrestle with Bill Gates to install them.

If it doesn't work, you may need to re-install drivers,
which is where you are now, anyway.

Go into the device manager:
Right-click on My Computer
Right-click on Properties
Click on the Hardware tab
Click on Device manager

Or find another way. There are several.

In Device Manager:
Open the Audio file (Sound, Video & Game controllers)
Delete everything in it, or at least those that relate to audio.
(You need to open the audio file repeatedly to do this;
it closes after every deletion)

Re-boot

Hope this is a help

ArtGurl makes sense to me.




... However, that is not the best recommendation.