repair install resulting eventually in problems...

During the small hours of this morning I repair installed XP Home ed. then

installed SP3 - and all was lovely.

Including the IE7 problem that I've given up chasing down whereby an ebay

auction "large photo's" wouldn't completely load.

Reboots were much faster - as I said - all was lovely.

This mornng boot up is taking AGES, and several icons are missing from

system tray ! including the "Power options" icon, which - lastt boot up - I

switched off then on to make it appear - and rebooted and it's gone again.

Any idea why several hours would make a BIG difference to what was

wonderful, and is now awful ?

TIA

regards, Richard