Folder opens when ant user selected

[Yankee fan]

Hi! Not sure if I am in the right forum or not so...

I have a DELL Dimension 4700. 3.2 GHZ, 2 GB RAM, 200 BG HD, Windows XP Pro EP2 completely updated.

Starting yesterday, I turn on the machine and it brings me to to normal screen with our 6 users listed. When I select ANY user to go to their dekstop, it brings up all the correcy settings, and then it inexplicablt opens a folder call DELL. The path to this folder is C--- Program Files --- Dell. The folder is open and you can see the other contents (folders) within the folder. It doesn'r run any program or anything --- it just opens this folder.

It opens this no matter what "user" you choose.

There id=s nothing in "startup" that is asking the system to open this folder.

We just close the folder and carry on and everything else id=s fine.

Ever hear of anything like that?

Thanks...

[EzyStvy]

The following should apply to you too:

System32 Folder Opens When Logging on to Windows XP, Windows 2000, or Windows NT 4.0
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/170086/en-us

[Yankee fan]

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run

I went to this area of the registry as the article suggested. There were 14 entries, only 1 was blank and 1 had "value not set.

Name Type Data
(default) REG_SZ (values not set)
REGISTRYMECHANIC REG_SZ

The other 12 entries were all type REG_SZ , but they all had data in them.

[EzyStvy]

CAUSE
This behavior can occur if a null, incomplete, or damaged entry exists in the registry.

Null means zero/empty/blank....