Hi Tim,

I've been meaning to update you on the "admin Vs. users" thing
with my XP install. Unfortunately I can not be as clear about
everything as I'd like to, because I did (of course - even
though I KNOW one shouldn't) do more than one thing at once and
since I'm not getting any younger, it is even more confusing. I
installed a little StartUp manager (the Mike Lin one - which I
was [later] glad to see was #1 in the list of "best startup
utils" somewhere, the 2nd being sysinternals Autoruns; I have
known and respected Russinovich's work for a long time so I
installed that one too, but I have yet to see what the one minor
change I made with it will cause, if anything).

Well, after running your reg file, the first thing I noticed was
that "E:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Start
Menu\Programs\Administrative Tools" remained where it was, even
though all the other start Menu items from "all users" were gone
- the problem is - and I really apologize for my stupidity - I
can't remember whether I had not moved them manually by that
time, or some of them, or none... Sigh... And that "Adm. Tools"
section is an exact copy of "E:\Documents and
Settings\Administrator\Start
Menu\Programs\SYSTEM\Accessories\Administrative Tools" (as you
can see I had by then tried to organize things a little).

The next thing was that (needless to say, not having studied the
deceptively obvious Mike Lin "Startup" program), I deleted the
four "all users" startup items (mainly because one of them was
giving me an "X is already running!" message at each startup).
Well, after deleting them from "all users" I found they were
(probably not to YOUR surprise) also gone from "current user" -
I guess the logic being that the current user (who may or may
not be the admin) is certainly one of "all users". IOW, there IS
a logic, albeit a MS logic at work here.

Anyway, I replaced the start up items (the hard way, manually -
I couldn't bring them back within the Startup program since I
just hit delete - it never having occurred to me to see what
happened if I right-clicked on an entry...).

Then I ran Autoruns and saw double entries for those startup
programs and deleted one of each of the pairs. Have not rebooted
XP since - I am very disorganized these days... Will be
rebooting into XP later on and will update you...

At this point I have a feeling I may have started to mess with
things too much too early and that your advice - while
deceptively simple - may be too advanced for me at this stage. I
wish I could get hold of an XP book where the logic behind the
'admin', 'all users' and 'current user' directories and startup
programs (etc.) is explained. I remember the first time I
installed XP I was utterly perplexed by TWO startup menus in
"start", and that's where it all began...

Anyway... Thank you very much for the help you have offered, I
will continue to work on this slowly. I have decided that
cleaning my drive of all the crap that has accumulated over the
years is the #1 priority so I am not spending as much time on my
"XP test install" as I really should be if I was as serious as I
thought I was... But I am more confused than serious...

Anyway, thanks /again/ and I'll leave it here for now...

t.