I have created a problem for myself and I'm trying to track it down. Nexstart launches but has no systray. In a few moments it then shuts down the display but is still running. Workshelf seems uneffected.

I tried unintsalling and restarting from scratch with the same results. So I'm looking for

1. Any registry settings that maybe created (where they may be found)

2. DLL dependencies not distributed in the install.

Hmm... What do you mean by 'it shuts down the display'?

Anyway, NextSTART settings are stored in the Windows Registry at

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\WinSTEP2000\NextSTART

Whatever it is has made it so nextStart start bar displays with no systray and opening the settings causes it tolose the startbar and no longer function yet the program is running. Workshelf seems to run but accessing the settings causes it to crash as well. After cleaning out the install and registry the install has errors too but they don't really identify themselves except as access violations.

The system is clearly messed up but nothing else seems effected by the condition.

Is it possible your infested with something - Virus/Adware/Spyware?

Also, you may want to do some Ram and Hard Drive diags to make sure nothing there is hosing things up.

It's something that changed at the sytem level. Winstep and Xtreme have been very solid for a very very long time now. Did an adware and virus check as i was suspecting something like that too.

The reason I asked about Adware and Viruses is the "access violations" your getting during a reinstall of Winstep Extreme.

There's no reason for access violations during an install,especially if your running as an admin account, unless something is there or changed that shouldn't be, and I've found that that's a positive indicator for possible infestation.

It may take running 2 or 3 different spyware remediation software, ie Adaware SE, Spybot S&D, etc. and I'd run HiKJackThis as well looking for things that might not be caught otherwise, just be careful with it as it can be as dangerous as it is helpful, since you can delete entries from the registry using it.

Yes, as Cef100 pointed out, Access Violation errors during Setup indicate something is wrong with the system itself.

Are you overclocking your CPU? After a while this can sometimes lead to CPU failure even if it worked correctly for months or even years at the overclocked speed.

Do you have a motherboard temperature monitor utility to check current CPU/MB temperatures? A fan might not be working properly, which would cause the CPU to overheat and fail.

Most hard disks today have SMART technology to predict imminent failure - is this feature turned on in the BIOS and do you have an utility to check the current SMART status of your hard disks? Besides a hard drive going south, a bad cable can also lead to data corruption and trouble.

What Anti-Virus software are you running? Have you tried running setup with the AV software temporarily turned off?

What other software are you running? Have you tried systematically turning each application off, one by one, to see if that cures the problem?

It really was not a virus but something at the system level that got trashed. Just finished formatting and reinstalling WinXP and it's all fine again.

I just hate when that happens.

Ouch.