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Mike, thanks for all your offline help. I'm copying this to the omega
list for closure's sake.
With respect to running msconfig.exe and disabling all start-up things:
>The fact that starting with no apps did not fix it points to
>another possible culprit. I know that safe mode boots up with the
>simplest video driver there is - 640 x 480 VGA, so maybe it is a
>video driver problem.
I think you hit it!
Unfortunately, I changed my resolution to 640x480, 256 colors, which
destroyed the arrangement of the sea of icons on my desktop. I should
have kept it at 1024x768 and changed to 256 colors.
That worked. Checkmarks are back.
It turns out that one particular mode doesn't work anymore -- high
color (16 bit). I have always used that mode because it uses up
less display memory, and the colors are indistinguishable from true
color (32 bit) mode. However, with 16-bit colors, the checkmarks
disappear from my checkboxes. That has never happened before.
Maybe my video driver got corrupted.
I'm using 32 bit colors for now. Thanks for the help tracking this
down.
>If either of these tests fixes the problem, then you could be sure
>the problem was in your video driver. You might find a successful
>update for the driver on the manufacturer's site.
It's a legacy NVIDIA RIVA TNT2 model 64. I'll look and see.
Occasionally Microsoft has a new driver for it on the Windows Update
site. The last Windows Update might have spoiled it.
>As for your last question about file integrity, Windows comes with
>something called File Signature Verification tool which does just
>what you are asking about. I've never really used it, so I can't
>tell you whether it is effective. Run "msinfo32.exe" (yes that is
>the real name, on XP anyway), then go to the Tools menu, and look
>for the File Signature Verification utility. Give it a try.
I tried that (after slipstreaming my XP installation CD to SP2) and
it found a few problems, which may or may not be the result of more
recent updates than SP2. In any case everything works now.
-Alex
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