What the heck is going on?!

Hopefully I can explain this problem so you can understand it.
Background information: I have a Dell Dimension 8300, 3.0 GHz, 2GB
RAM, 5GB free on primary hard drive, Nvidia GeForce 6600 OC 256MB,
Norton AntiVirus 2005, and a bunch of other software. I'm running
Windows XP Pro SP2 with five user accounts (my wife and I are admins,
the kids are limited). We typically leave the PC on 24/7 with reboots
approximately once a week. Okay, enough rambling.

Here's the problem: Occasionally, I will reboot the PC, and when I
click my account to log in, the process will take 1-2 hours (instead
of 1-2 minutes), all the while assuring me that Windows is loading my
settings. When my desktop finally appears, all of my icons have been
stacked together into one big -- albeit, aligned -- pile on the left
side of the screen. In addition, many files that I previously deleted
have been magically restored to my primary hard drive, including a 4GB
"Downloads" subfolder in my "My Documents" folder that I banished to
my secondary hard drive MONTHS ago. Deleted desktop icons have been
resurrected and now haunt the screenspace amidst newer icons that I
just created the day before. Cats and dogs are living together. Is
this the end of the world? What manner of sorcery has infected my
PC? Does anyone have any idea what I'm raving about?

There has been another phenomenon occurring that I initially thought
was related, and it probably is. Intermittently, when my wife would
log out, it would take an unusually long amount of time (minutes, not
hours) to finally reach the "Windows is logging out" screen, but then
suddenly the monitor would go black, and the main login screen would
never appear. This would force us to cycle power, and more often than
not (but not 100% of the time), when I logged in to my account again
after this experience, Windows would proceed to raise all kinds of
files from the dead again. However, for the first time just today, my
wife wasn't even logged in, but when *I* logged out, restarted the PC,
and logged in again...BAM! All my hours of desktop icon organization
down the drain.

After having experienced this phenomenon half-a-dozen times now, and
having killed that zombie "Downloads" folder over and over again, I'm
fingering my 20-gauge shotgun and eyeballing the CPU thinking, "This
might be the only solution." Can anyone help me before I blow away my
Dell Dimension 8300??

Thanks in advance,
Mike

.

Relevant Pages

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