Okay, looks like I'd totally misread what you said about plotting common names.

You're not seeing them in the help dialogue box when you go GOTO -> STAR -> COMMON NAMES from the menu, I thought you couldn't see them plotted on the chart area of the screen.

Well, the star names crop up in the "help" style window for GOTO -> STAR -> COMMON NAMES for the new update on win2k service pack 4. So it is not a general problem.

And they pop up for Win ME, which is what Bill uses if I remember rightly.

The names also crop up in the More Info right click box.

So, the question is, do you see all the coloured and underlined lines in Quick Info?

Or do you see them in GOTO Messier Objects?

The Guide More Info type help page is what happens when you GOTO -> STAR -> COMMON NAMES, Acamar in red and underlined is the first one I get wth (the1 Eri) in black brackets next to it, top left.

Top right of the dialogue there is a menu option "Color" which lets you change the default colours on these screens, you could try playing with that, but if you are seeing coloured underlined links in goto messier and such, it most likely isn't that.

If you can't see any colours in any of that sort of help page, GOTO COMET for instance, it might be an OS thing and the graphic's screen used for More Info type help screens. I dunno if service pack 3 did any directx updates to win xp, one or two directx security issues cropped up recently which had to be plugged, for instance.

If you can see the underlined coloured objects in other help screens, and the file common2.nam most likely does exist in your Guide directory as you say you can GOTO these objects, then you've got a very special bug indeed, and hopefully Bill's bugcatcher version will find it because it's something special to your setup.

eg http://support.microsoft.com/kb/941568

Sometimes these plugged vulnerabilities affect functionality, and if you've autoupdate or similar automatic security options on your maching on they get plugged and your OS is changed from what you know of without you even knowing it.

I take it your xp pro is xp pro and not xp pro x64, btw.

Cheers

John