Software Hive Corrupt or Missing

Can you look in Device Manager and see if you have anything with a Yellow or Red X. Right Click on My Computer > Properties > Hardware >Device Manager

A Blank box for Device Manager…. No hardware listed at all.

Is your desktop showing?

use windows sfc (system file checker) You'd need your XP CD to make this work.
Click Start> Run> type sfc /scannow Note the space.
(Note that there is a space between sfc and /scannow)

Desktop is showing fine. I was thinking…. Back before I posted here for help, one of my last attempts had been to go into msconfig and unchecked pretty much everything in startup and had it set for a custom bootup without the ini files loading. would those settings have carried forward thru what we have done? If so, shall I go into msconfig and set it to "normal"?

Very much so. There's one to leave unchecked if it's listed: [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\software\microsoft\shared tools\msconfig\startupreg\Load] ? ???????Ÿ [?]

I'll be offline in about 15 minutes for about 1 hr.

I now have internet, everything is doing "automatic" updates which need to be turned off. I don't want to interrupt anything at the moment so in a few will turn all that plus starting at system boot. Looking good atm, thank you.

Let the updates run and I'll be back in about 45 mins

For you return, some observations … Internet Explore fires up, connects to home page (aol) then shuts itself down. There is no "Safely Remove Hardware" so must power down the pc to remove the external usb harddrive. Windows Security still see's Norton Antivirus and is alerting that it is out of date. In "Remove programs" Norton WMI is in the list. Should I uninstall?

Unistall anything that shows Nortons or Symantec in add/remove programs then do this:

use windows sfc (system file checker) You'd need your XP CD to make this work.
Click Start> Run> type sfc /scannow Note the space.
(Note that there is a space between sfc and /scannow)

sfc has completed. No messages, no request for reboot.

So lets reboot and let me know how everything is running.

IE still closes itself a second or so after it connects to home page. I changed homepage to www.google.com with the same results. Still no safely remove hardware option. NO Norton/Symantec products are listed in add/remove programs. Under there is a folder "Norton Internet Security" plus a subfolder for Norton AntiVirus. Not sure if they are functional tho.

Lets run a new combofix scan now.

clicked thru the ComboFix Norton warnings….. Now ComboFix says there is a newer version of ComboFix available Would I like to update Combofix? yes or no