After leaving my computer idle while I'm at work or for a full day or so, or sometimes just a few hours...when I click on "My Computer" on my desktop, the window pops up empty and Task Manager says it's Not Responding. Ending task just clears my desktop and after a few minutes, it comes back. Same problem. I can't access any files or go into explorer, my computer, etc unless I reboot. Not sure why this is happening? Is my hard drive just shutting off or something??
XP Home
1gig Ram
80 gig hard drive
2.26ghz P4

First before you do anything rash I would try doing a repair install of Windows XP. If the problem still comes back, back up all your data and format the HD.

Another thing you could try is to check for possible virues, or spyware.

Thanks, I'll run adaware, spybot, and norton 2003 when I get home....

The problem wasn't there this mornin' so it seems to be intermittent.

This is the Explorer process crashing. I doubt it has anything to do with your hard drive. If you say it occurs after the computer has been idle for a while then power management settings and scheduled tasks are the first suspect.

Thanks Nodsu....the only thing I have changed recently is for the monitor to turn off after 1 hour of idle time.
I will go back in and make sure I didn't do something else without knowing it.

I always end these programs in Task Manager...I don't know what they are or what they do, but I always ran stable before when I did it.

KBD.exe
S3apphk.exe
hpsysdrv.exe

Anyone know if maybe one of those is critical? I'd like to actually uninstall KBD, it shows up in my Add/Remove list, but I don't even know what it is....

KBD.exe;
Multimedia keyboard manager for logitech keyboards
S3apphk.exe;
S3 graphics related
hpsysdrv.exe;
This item keeps track of how many times the system has been recovered and the times of the first and last recoveries done on the system. Leaving unchecked will sometimes prevent the Keyboard Manager program from detecting that the computer is an HP. Since this program/driver was only made to run on HP, if it can't tell that it is an HP it will not run. If unchecked, it can prevent the running of the Application Recovery CDs, the use of the multimedia keys, and the HP Instant Support. Also seen that without it running, the Riptide Sound card that was installed on some older HP computers stops working.