route 44, thank you VERY much for the help! i've been on thier (systweak) boards, HP boards and a couple of other places with no luck, just lots of suggestions. heck, not until i got here did i even learn about the mini dump. i did go to Event Mngr, but that link to MS led mostly nowhere, in fact my error code (event ID 1003)closely matched only one entry & it regarded MS server 2003! at least i now have been pointed in right direction. thanks again, tom