Like I said, I can get the explorer.exe to launch, but only as a file browser, not as the actual shell. (btw - in order to do this, i had to chance the USERPROFILE env var from x:\windows\sytem32\config\systemprofile to x:\Users\default ) When I go into the winlogon reg key and change the SHELL entry from the cmd /k cmd.exe to explorer.exe, then open taskmanager, kill explorer.exe and relaunch it, I see the little blurb about 'Preparing windows ' - Windows update, etc.. (small grey screen at upper right corner), but the actual GUI never launches.