Pseudome

...If you haven't already found it. I stumbled across this article on Microsoft's site and thought it might, _MIGHT_ pertain to your problem. Hope it helps. http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q298/5/83.ASP

A complete reinstall of Win2k, and THEN applying SP2 seemed to work just fine. In fact, everything is running quite nicely now. My guess is, I did so many registry hacks during my first installation, SP2 freaked and couldn't figure out how to properly apply itself. Just a guess however.

This is a VERY strange goof...Very. Did I mention the "very" part? So I install SP2. I ran into one oddity upon reboot in which my desktop was just, gone (except for my wallpaper for some reason). I had forced 2k into "ClassicShell" mode to chase away that IE 5 look, so I figured perhaps that's what was messing the system up. Sure enough, boot into safe mode, change the value in the registry, reboot and all is well. HOWEVER, there is still one HORRIBLE problem that remains. You know those dialogue boxes that Windows throws up whenever, oh, lets say you're installing new drivers, and you need to browse directories to find them? Or perhaps you're familiar with Media Player...you know when you go to open a file and it pops up a dialogue box that allows you to browse for files? Those "browsing" dialogue boxes _NO LONGER WORK_. It seems like anything that uses one of those standard Windows "browse" dialogue boxes just does not work anymore...Active Movie, Media Player 6.4, 7, Winamp, installation routines, etc. Does ANYONE have any clue as to what might be causing this? As I said, it's VERY strange, and I've never seen anything like this. Insight of any degree would be seriously appreciated.