:emotion-22: Bellboy you had the only thought I never came up with. Thanks,Thanks,Thank you very much. I always have different flash drives plugged in to keep photos on and save space on my little hard drive the Dell 8250 came with. I also send many to the first edition the Dell 8100 both of which I run all the time. Just last week the main fan failed that cools the CPU on the 9 year old Dell 8100 but it sttill worked only very slow. Had I not been watching on start up.In the first minute while the screen is black and Windows 2000 had not started it said at the top "Fan not detected" Might be a good tip for others if your machine starts acting slow and stupid see if that main fan is running. Power supply fans just cause unknown shutdowns. Check out my reply to Alexandra who had a great list of suggestions you ,might like it and learn more about me. P.S As a retired Big Screen TV repair guy I am a member of Techlore,Fix Ya and others as a contributor through a friend who likes to write up fixes. We discuss fixes on our web cams at night and he writes them up. I am a disabled Veteran and Larry suffers from Cancer so we don't sleep much.Our Electronics and helping others keeps us going. Always fun after our talk to see which of my girl friends are up and have fun playing with them since my monitor and DLP 57 inch HDTV are in the same room I sit on my couch and it's like they are right here in my living room. So thanks a lot I'm OK now after pulling that one flash drive. It must have been waiting for something from me though it did not show in task manager. Don US Coast Guard DAV 1969/1977  donfishin, Found this posted solution. It may or maynot work not knowing the cause. also, do you have a flash drive plugged in? [URL] Good luck A great coincidence. Your link to Techlore which I mentioned earlier is written by my friend Larry Dillon.. Poor guy had a brain tumor and is suffering from Cancer. He loves his electronics like me and we worked together for years where I am on Long Island,NY He now resides in Michigan happily married  but unfortunately suffering as I said from Cancer.  Still writing and offering help to others with his own 30 years plus repairing all electronics. All my best to Larry and Bellboy. Great fixes. Don            
Everyone seems to have experienced this blinking hourglass. How did it come to my Dell 8250 Win XP home edition. I would appreciate how to get it off my screeen. Thanks, Don U.S.Coast Guard veteran 1969/1977  
Blinking hourglass Where does it come from ...how to stop it?