Thanks for the responses, and thanks SO MUCH JohninKansas for taking so much time to give me so much information.

Here's the WEIRDEST THING that just happened while I was sorting through all the information. I tried installing the Mustek 600cp scanner again - known NOT to work in XP and for which Mustek has provided downloadable xp-compatible drivers.

It WORKS!! I don't know what the heck I did, but it installed correctly and works just fine, thank you. The control program still says that I have a parallel device with no drivers installed, and doesn't know that it's working.

In other news (is there life away from this computer?) I got rid of the startup screen problem. I unclicked all the startup programs one at a time and restarted (yup, that's how I spent my day yesterday) until I got rid of the pest. Works fine now, and somehow the right things got re-clicked on all by themselves.

Interesting thing I found out about FTP programs. (I'm losing my grip, calling things like this interesting). The free limited edition download from Ipswitch is no longer free. You have to be a teacher and identify yourself fully and your school and why you want to use the FTP program to download it. This is too bad, because I already knew how to use that one and it's on my other computer. Found another free one from Coffeecup Software, Inc. If anyone has warnings about it, let me know.

I'm making progress, and may branch into the music stuff soon! My MusicTime Deluxe installed fine except that it says my midi is not setup correctly. (I have no midi set up at all yet). Still no CoolEdit.

Thanks again.