I did not tell it to do that!

[a is dum]

Thanks but,

I can't run msconfig I have XP family and not XP Pro.
The symptoms look the same but I cannot get into the config programm.
What now??

Richard, my man: missed your response by 50 secs. did what you wrote, had to reboot manually It performed all sots of things, rebooted, came back in same, but shorter startup routine.
looks OK now but I will restart again to see if that auto scan type thingy reappears again.
Talk to you soon.