So Dell support tells me that sometimes 'blank' works and sometimes it doesn't... who are these people?

Thanks Hengis for working with me on all this... what a hassle, eh!

Heh, it's no problem dude, we're here - just lean on us Let me do some digging today....

Ok, This Site will get you back into Windows and will reset your Admin password to one that you can choose, there are some great free tools on there. Let us know how you get on...

I like the site, yea, some good tools. Dig this, I used a win2k disk to get in to my xp system. The win2k recovery console bypasses the admin password altogether. What I found was a corrupt registry. I was able to boot my last known good and things seem to be back to relative normalcy. I am still going to retrieve my admin password for future use, and I'm afraid there still may be stability issues.

Yea, well this was fun but but it was all for naught. I search my ATI control panel, which I've been through a hundred times, only this time I notice a not very obvious button on one of the tabs which opens up 'panel properties' where I find a button that says 'scale image' with the a button that says 'expand to full panel size'. So, after all that all I had to do was click a few buttons... boy do I feel dim. I guess I can use this as a lesson in knowing your own PC and software.

Thanks for the help anyway, I did learn some things so I guess it's not a total waste of time.
:oops:

:lol: LOL

Oh well at least you figured out what it was....