I've tried system restore many times over the past year without success.  Also, reinstalled win XP pro without success.

Which model computer do you have? There was a problem reported a while ago on Dimension 8250s on which the BIOS was upgraded using a faulty hard drive version of the BIOS upgrade file.

Steve

Oops,

A Dimension 8250.

Steve,

You have a good memory.  I found the post by a Dell tech. and did a floppy disk flash BIOS update (or reinstall) of A04.  This fixed it!

Thanks.

So did you flash the BIOS to version A04 using the hard drive version of the flash BIOS upgrade program? If so, the solution is to use the floppy version of the BIOS upgrade program and reflash the BIOS. Note that if this is your problem, it has nothing to do with Windows XP, so if you need more help in solving the problem, post in the Dimension - BIOS forum where the problem has been discussed many times.

Steve