Just after XP starts, once the desktop icons appear, I would get a popup window saying: “Windows cannot find ‘soundmon.exe’ “.

This is after cleaning yet another infected system, so I figure I’ll take a look at the startup places (registry, services, etc), and disable anything not needed.

After a restart, I once again get: “Windows cannot find ‘soundman.exe’ ”

I search around in the registry, and find I can fix this by going to:

HKLMsoftwaremicrosoftwindows NTCurrentVersionWinLogon

look for the entry: Shell

Shell should contain the string: Explorer.exe soundmon.exe

Edit the string so that it just says: explorer.exe

Restart the PC, and you will have no more annoying popup.