Thanks all to have offered advice & solutions. Very much appreciated.
And yes, I need the Canon software, so the wife can do the photo stuff.. She likes the Canon easy print and shares with the nieces & nephews
They have fun goofing around & she wants a certain amount of independence.. She leaves the techie stuff to me..
No, the main gripe was a general one. That windows allows itself to get bogged down with crap: open files, duplicate entries, registry entries that conflict, etc..
But I believe we all agree, that Windows is [mostly] a necessity, and one that needs to bend to everyones wants & wishes. And we know that isnt always possible.
No, there was a conflict with the camera. It worked fine on my WinXP system here at work; loaded with CAD & other assorted engineering & graphics apps.. But a bare machine at home has issues. Weird.
I did call & talk to a Canon rep, and after about a ½ hour, we did get it to work. I now know something new: MSCONFIG.
We went through the list, turning everything off, and one by one, turning it all back on until I found the culprit. The expected thing (I cant say weird as this is expected, right!!) is that it now works, with everything turned on. So, somethi8n cured it, or so it seams.. And I have about 2 dozen photos of random things about our den / computer room! (most of which are blurred due to a slow shutter speed!!)
So, basically, something thats supposed to be easy to do, turned into a nightmare.. Me spending a few hours with various people & online to solve a silly issue..
