All good advice, thanks...

though gargoyle, I didn't follow any of what you wrote, I think because you assume I have more tech knowledge than I do..for instance, "hold control seek down while booting" I'm afraid didn't register, and neither did the "defrag in safemode".

I did understand, what you said about needing to have the Lotus Start Suite up and running, Jon, which may indeed be why that thing keeps coming up, as the first thing I've been doing when I start up the computer, is to go to the Lotus Task Bar and get rid of it. So I'll try to fiddle around a bit and see it that solves that particular problem.

I really don't think the AV or anti-Ad software is the problem as it hasn't changed for the better or worse since I downloaded it, but I will definitely take the advice to run both programs again to see what I can find.

Bill D, One of the files that seems to pop up regularely is from Easy Clip, and it's a good example of what I mean, because I don't think I actually ever use this, so why can't I just get rid of it? I did go to the file and open it (via scanning it first with AV) and that box just popped up again and said it was unable to open!

This laptop (my friend's) has Windows ME on it. I've never been thrilled with it, but it's not up to me to update it.

"the kernell32.dll pops up when? In what kind of box? and what precisely do you mean by "try to X it out"?....do you mean just close the 'box'? "

It seems to pop up whenever the heck it wants to. Sometimes it won't pop up for days (you know, the pop-up is one of those small gray boxes which just give you the info and then you can either click on OK or close it (which I call Xing it out, sorry.) I HAVE to do something about these boxes, because a little "Ding!" sounds if I don't and won't let me do anything else until I close it, but like I said, that means it'll close down all my open programs, which is a pain.

PS-Gargoyle-"patches"??

PPS- I did just try something for the heck of it-I did a "system restore" to a date which seemed to be before all this started, but to my chagrin, it also uninstalled one of my ISPs, and both of my AD and AV software, and that damn Organizer API file:orgapi 32dll box popped up immediatly ANYWAY, so I went back and uninstalled the system restore...and surprisingly, the box DIDN'T pop up when it came back to where I started! I have NO IDEA what the heck all that means!!

Sorry guys, I'm really trying to keep up here, and I'm really grateful for your input.

..xx..e