I am having a problem that's driving me crazy, and I can't find very much information about this specific problem. My computer has suddenly started emitting one short beep at the login screen, but only if I don't enter my password quick enough. If I loiter at the login screen for more than 7-8 seconds, it beeps once. Other than that, everything runs perfectly for hours and hours. I disabled the Windows Splash Screen to see what was going on back there, and I do see a problem that seems to be fairly common, but it's not beeping there, and in fact moves on to check C: drive with a clean slate last after displaying the error message. Windows is doing a drive check there and C:, D:, and G: check out fine. I am getting a message that Windows "cannot determine file system of drive \??\Volume{.......} with a Registry key in the brackets. I've found this in the Registry in the same areas that all other drives are listed, but I don't know what drive it is. The list is long. I have had at least 3 external drives plugged in since the reformat (see below), a USB multi card reader, several USB flash drives, and my cell phone, and I have no idea which drive this might be. My 5-1/2 year old home build: Gigabyte motherboard 8I915P Duo Pro, Socket 775 Pentium 4, 530, 3.0GHZ Creative SB Audigy 2 ZS sound card nVidia GeForce 9400GT EVGA graphics card w/1024MB memory 2GB DDR RAM One 80GB drive partitioned (C: & D:) (IDE drive) One 1TB drive (G:) (SATA drive) Floppy drive Lite-On CD/DVD burner Zip drive 610W PSU I ran Windows XP Home on this machine for 5-1/2 years. I finally decided to update from SP2 to SP3 around the end of October and within a week my troubles began. All sorts of Windows items (only Windows) started just disappearing or not working (WMP wouldn't play audio or video, blank window on Search, etc.), so I reformatted for the first time and started over at the beginning of November. I was recently given an XP Pro 32 bit upgrade disk with two retail keys, and I used my Home XP and the XP Pro upgrade slipstreamed to include SP3 to install Pro and it validated without a hitch. Got everything reinstalled within a day, and totally customized and tweaked before the week was out. One to two weeks ago I started noticing that it was beeping at the login screen. There are two profiles, one with a password (mine) and one without. If I enter my password quick enough (within 7 seconds or so), I don't get a beep. I did have another internal 160GB SATA drive installed, but I took it out after the reformat. I transferred all info over to the 1TB drive and uninstalled it. But that was during the first two weeks of the reformat and the computer was not emitting a beep at login afterwards. The only serious thing I've had problems with is antivirus. Because it's getting good reviews, I decided to try the Microsoft Security Essentials, and at first it ran well. I've always used AVG Free in the past, but I had problems with it updating before the reformat after updating it to the 2011 version, and it was nagging me to run that PC Analyzer and pay for it. Then I started noticing that MSE would have an error message that the service wasn't started and I wasn't protected. I would open the program and click the button to start the service and all would be well. But the icon wasn't always visible in the System Tray for me to tell if it was having a problem, and I'm not USED to having to constantly check my system protection, so I didn't always notice the minute it started having a problem. One day I noticed that MSE did not start at all and all efforts to start it manually from the Start Menu failed, so I uninstalled it and reinstalled AVG Free 2011. I ran full system antivirus scan and a full system Malwarebytes scan and they turned up nothing. I ran HijackThis on it and ran it through an analyzer and it turned up nothing. There is nothing wrong in the BIOS, no errors in Device Manager, and it passes post with flying colors. It's not overheating. I monitor fans, CPU temp, hard drive temps, and graphic card temp with SpeedFan and there is nothing wrong there. I tested the memory and there were no errors. I ran the quick and extended checks on my WD hard drive with no errors. This is the drive that Windows is installed on. I cleaned out the inside of the case a few months ago shortly before the reformat, so it's pretty clean. I've unplugged all USB devices and started the computer up with no USB devices, including mouse. I uninstalled all the recent Windows Updates in case there was a glitch there. I did a System Restore to a week back. I defragged all drives and partitions. I booted into Safe Mode and it beeps there, too. I did a Selective Startup. I ran the Autoruns program and disabled the Windows Autocheck. I totally uninstalled AVG with their remover tool, rebooted with the Internet disconnected, and it still beeped. I haven't opened up the case and disconnected anything on the inside, but all drives work correctly. I haven't created any new profiles since reformatting and setting up these two, nor have I deleted any. Guest Account is disabled. Startup items are kept to a minimum, and I don't let much of anything run that doesn't absolutely have to. Gosh! I feel like I just wrote a book! Can anyone give me any hints on any other avenues that I might pursue to find out what this beep is about? Could this be my board? I'm not experiencing any instability of any kind, and my clock is still keeping time. Thanks. : ) dj --------------------------------------------------------------- Please remember to trim your replies (including this sentence and everything below it) and adjust the subject line as necessary. 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