if its a possible hardware conflict, just go into safe mode, and into device manager and under system look for 'PCI Bus' and delete it. Restart and it should come up finding ALL of your hardware all over again, so if there is a conflict that will almost ALWAYS resolve it. Make sure you know where the drivers are at, usually in windows; windows\system (or system32) or in the inf folder. Another thing to do is above suggestion of finding all aol entries and delete them. If it happens on startup, then go and look at these following keys (these run programs / setup continuations at startup). If you dont know what it is, LEAVE IT ALONE!!! Other wise you may have a format on your hands, and as always backup the registry before messing with it. Here are the areas to check:
• HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run
• HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run
• HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnce
• HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnce
• HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\ RunServices
• HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\ RunServicesOnce
• HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\ RunOnce\Setup
You can also try going into dos (F8 then dos safe mode) and then type in the following:
scanreg /restore <enter>
and choose a date. This doesn't always work, and make sure to unplug the modem before doing this. This will hopefully default to what the registry looked like at the date you picked. Worse case scenario, guess you could set it up as it was on first boot up. You have to attrib the config.1st and user.1st so its no longer hidden, archived, protected, etc. Just use the -r -a -s -h attribs, then rename them to config.sys and user.dat (rename the original to config.old and user.old). Other than that, guess you could deltree.