[Sticks]

Well here is my XP problem

2 weeks ago on a Friday Miss Compaq objected to the scanner drawing too much power from the USB port and shut the scanner down.

I was killing the programs off related to the scanner in Task Manager off and tried to shut down from task manager.

For some reason it got to the picture of the hill and then did not continue to shut down (so it seemed) So I had to try the power switch.

On boot up it did not run scan disk, but the shut down seemed to be corrupted. I tried the restore function, and got to the bit where it seemed to refuse to shut down and used the power switch. on boot up the Restore failed and was forever corrupt.

Dixons helpline told me to reformat the entire hard drive (The Nuke option) and start again. The following day (Saturday) discovered it does go through shut down, but it stays on the picture of the hill (or Stonehenge now) for about 1.5 minutes then a further 25-30 seconds to complete the shut down process.

I am told there is a corrupted registry, and Compaq said Nuke option. How ever before this happened I installed a large number of programmes I got from the net, plus all the Microsoft fixes which took over 2 hours.

I would like to fix the shut down so it is back to the quick shut down with out having to do the nuke option.