Here's what happened... I had a GeForce 5500 video card and service pack 2 on my machine for months - no problem. I installed service pack 3. When the machine rebooted, the splash screen displayed normally, the screen went black, the hard drive light stayed on for about 2 seconds, the screen flickered like something was trying to display and then the machine locked up. Had to reboot in safe mood and disable the card to get it to come up normally. I un-installed service pack 3 and the problem remained. I put the most recent BIOS on the motherboard, went out and bought a GeForce 7300 GT card that is VISTA complaint (surely it would be WXP SP3 compliant?) and installed it with the most recent drivers from their site. Still the problem exists. Safe mode always works so I don't think it's the card. I have loaded the video drivers from safe mood and from normal mode...I have spent 5 hours with microsoft level 2 techs on the phone and the problem remains. I have reloaded service pack 3 because I will inadvertently do it at some point so I maight as well do it now and work this problem out with it installed. Any help would be appreciated!