I have two problems that started at the same time, though no event (S/W or H/W installation, upgrade, etc) seems to be associated.

1) After the screensaver (Webshots) has been active for a few minutes, I find when I wake the machine up that the SHUT DOWN WINDOWS dialog box is open. It seems to require that the screensaver be active for, say, ten minutes or more. I have been using Webshots screensaver for a couple of years without problem.

2) I have MS Encarta Desk Reference 2002 with the entire DVD installed to my hard drive. I also have MS Streets and Trips with all files installed to hard drive (recent, can't remember the version). These were both working fine. At the same time I started getting the shut down boxes, these both started giving me problems. If I attempt to start either *one*, I get a series of boxes asking me to insert the installation CD's of *both* Encarta and Streets and Trips. I can get through them by choosing CANCEL about 20 times. If I *do* put in the installation disks, it tells me it cannot find the files its looking for.

2.5) *After* this problem had started, I attempted to install the software for an HP 3300 CSE scanner (USB) which I was moving from another machine where it worked fine. I downloaded the latest HP software & drivers. The install s/w tells me that it cannot write to the registry and was unable to initialize the driver. It also tells me that I may not be able to uninstall the software. It was correct.

Hello and Welcome to PCHF on this glorious day - the sun is shining, birds churping.....
Oh ya sorry back to the problem.

It kind of sounds like a permission problem, especially the last part.
Have you recently changed your login name?

I have never heard of that problem with Webshots, seems very weird that it has all of a sudden started.

Anyway have you tried running spyware software e.g. Microsoft Anti-Spyware
http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/fil...RSS,RSS,00.asp

Also are you running any antivirus software?

I had been running for some time with Administrator as the only user. I eventually became leery of the risk and created a Power User. These problems do occur when on the Power User account *and* the programs were both installed under Administrator.

That thought had occurred to me but I would have expected a cleaner response from the programs involved were this simply a user privilege problem.

I will uninstall them from Administrator and reinstall them from the user account and see if that clears things up.

OKAY FOLKS, that just leaves the Screensave -> Shut Down problem. Why would a screensaver bring up the shut down dialog?

I'll try a different screen saver and see if that might be the issue.

Abraham