Frazzled! Ongoing issues I hope somebody will help me resolve, or send me a good size sledgehammer ( ),

In Services, the Alerter never will start. Error 1079 saying that it is running in different credentials (?) than other services running (with it?). So, I have tried to see what all is working together, ended up changing almost all system services to automatic, one by one, to see where the problem is, what is tied in with the Alerter...I don't even know what the alerter really is and if I need it anyways. Can somebody offer me some advice?

I was getting an error on every startup, and while on system, #31012 IPANTHLP, but since all services, just about, have been changed to automatic, now this is not coming up (good thing??)..but getting the error that the Alerter is not running, a Service Control Mgr error.

Any help much appreciated! And Thank you.