John, I went in today and downloaded several of those Microsoft Powertoys. Thanks for the link--it was very easy to save those to fiddle with later. Last time I went looking for the TweakUI I think I did get it free from the ZD folks, after quite a search to find one that would work with that operating system and it never did quite what I wanted.

The System Tray at the bottom of the screen is where the action is when the computer is booting up. Those icons appear as they are loaded. The Start Menu isn't the same as the system tray, but I need to see if TweakUI will address the tray or my problem has not been solved. It is still only a few seconds, but I can see the system working a little longer to install things I rarely run that I don't want to load themselves automatically. I have a desktop icon and if I want to launch them I'll go there or will open my All Programs list from "start" and open it.

I've also downloaded the Picasa program from Google. Several friends have been impressed with it. I'll give it a test. I organize my images in files anyway, so it may find those and just show me what I already have (and could find in Windows Explorer). The interesting part will be what happens when making editing choices. I often use the quick but not full-featured Microsoft photo editing program that WE brings up, but I have Adobe Photoshop and need to become more conversant with it. As to organizing photos, there is also a feature of Nero that pops up and asks if I want to download images when I plug in my digital camera. There's a lot to sort out between the resident and the purchased programs now residing in this new computer.



SRS