well, after 2 weeks of no trouble with XP something strange has popped up.........
when i boot.....it doesnt say Windows XP Professional anymore ....... it just says Windows XP?!?!
its the same screen from when i first installed SP2, it fails to remember my previous settings and desktop properties when i last shutdown. it also fails to load all the icons for my background programs.
Great job skimming your own thread, Ace. DCrazy already said that SP2 changed the boot screen. It's just an image file with a specific filename sitting in your Windows directory, so it's not that difficult to change.
Maybe (actually, almost definitely) your profile got borked. That usually happens when you shut down the computer improperly, like cutting the power while it's logging off. Try creating another user profile and see if it still happens.
SP2 is not very good at uninstalling -- most likely your setup will get FUBAR if you do. Try cleaning out the registry w/ RegSeeker, helped in my case.
when i first installed SP2, i had SpyBot's TeaTimer running, and i think i clicked to deny a registry change that was a critical one to the installation. so i used Sys Restore and rolled back to the installation date and removed teatimer from my startup list. rebooted.......works perfectly now.