some problem with your computer just sort of fixes itself, and you don't know what was actually wrong or what made the problem go away?
Case in point. On my main XP box, I could not get a proper connection to one of the networked printers in my home. Every time I tried to connect to this specific printer hosted on another PC, it came up as a LanManager connection - which works like crap. I delete the printer, try to set it up as a local port (which other printers came us as all by themselves) and Windoze tells me the port already exists, despite my having deleted it, repeatedly, thoroughly.
I set up a connection to that printer on another XP box, and it worked just fine as local port. So I went back and tried one more time on the main box, and IT WORKED!
Just plain FM!
You ever have one of those days?
(Disclaimer: this is not a tech support request - just an example of a hair pulling episode that resolved itself magically.)