Other than Microsofts solution (which didn't really help in my case) http://support.microsoft.com/default...1&PA=1&SD=HSCH Try unplugging (or turning off) all USB devices and removing all cd's and floppys then re-booting. If you still get the flashlight, then I'd say it's time to reload XP. Especially if its been over a year since the last XP install, (I'm a firm believer in the "XP half-life theory"). If after re-boot the flashlight goes away, you can start turning things back on to try and determine which device is the culprit. I'd still reload XP though, nothing like a fresh operating system.

If you do decide on re-installing the OS, I would highly recommend getting a new hard disk drive (only $50 at NewEgg for 40 GB). Make the new HDD the master and your original drive the slave. You should still back up important files on the original drive for safety before doing anything but nothing should happen to it to cause you to lose data. (It's a good idea to get the new HDD up and running before you hook up the old one as a slave so windows dosen't get confused with seeing another OS when trying to load a new one).
Load a new copy of XP onto the new HDD (C: ) along with all of your programs. Setup the original drive (D: ) as your user files drive (XP lets you specify where the "My Documents" and related folders, e-mail files, etc. are located). Now that everything is working good and fast again, you can use Norton Ghost to make a disk image of drive C: and save it to drive D: or CD/DVD. Now anytime things start acting goofy you can simply restore the c: drive back to the way it was in the beginning and it only takes about 10 minutes. This setup has saved me hours of troubleshooting time for weird problems like this one. Just remember to set the default locations of ALL of your user files to the D: drive (don't forget e-mail) because when you restore drive C: it is overwritten.

Another option and what I did is I bought a 120 GB hard drive, partitioned it (40GB for drive C: and the balance for D: ) and I use my old 80 GB HDD for drive E: as a backup drive for the Norton Ghost files for both the C: and D: drives.

Anyway, thats it for my thoughts. Good Luck

Paul