Hi Martyn > I have a large number of photos, including hundreds of family history photos, stored in various folders. I am unable to open some (not all) of these folders as when I try, after a pause of a few seconds I get a window displaying the following message: Windows Explorer has encountered a problem and needs to close. We are sorry for the inconvenience. When I close this window I get back to the desktop and sometimes but not always the desktop is on a white background and I am invited to "restore my active desktop" by clicking on this button. Are you running Adobe Photoshop Elements on your system ? If so, this problem arises because that programme has a default setting to create thumbnails of images, whereas XP doesn't like this. Right click on any image file on your hard drive using Windows Explorer. Then click on "Properties" from the drop down list. Then click on the "Photoshop Image" tab. Then uncheck the "Generate Thumbnails" box. There a bit about this procedure on the Microsoft Knowedgebase, which was how I solved this when I had the same problem. Best wishes. Paul Gaskell Minutes Secretary and Publicity Officer Oxfordshire Family History Society Web : www.ofhs.org.uk E-mail : publicity@ofhs.org.uk