John, the MusicTime is indeed the gvox product. I went to check this out by looking at my desktop shortcut and discovered that the restore had uninstalled my MusicTime! And this was from a download (for an upgrade) whose link is now expired! Deeper and deeper into this morass I'm sinking...

So the problem of the flash is gone, but so is my MusicTime (which is being rectified. They were supposed to send me a disk in addition to the download link and hadn't, but it's "in the mail" now). Still don't know whether it was the HP or the MusicTime s/w that caused the trouble.

Next problem: tried to switch from a wired SpeedStream modem to a 2WIRE wireless router. The wireless caused static in my desktop speakers, and when I connected the laptop to it my desktop crashed. SBC and Dell killed 2 days in a row of mine and it still doesn't work. Tried reconfiguring the ISP address, tried turning the cord around, tried swearing and shaking the little black box. To no avail. Will do some searching for online wisdom, since the techies don't seem to be able to figure it out at SBC or Dell.