I may have posted this question before but got no answer that I remember.  In scouring an old version of Norton's AntiVirus off my father-in-law's computer I may have gone too far, as I stripped something out of the Registry (Windows XP)and ever since he gets the following message on boot:

"16-bit Windows Subsystem
"SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\VirtualDeviceDrivers. VDD. Virtual device driver format in the registry is invalid.  Choose Close to terminate the application."

Then the message box gives two choices, Close and Ignore.  It doesn't seem to matter which he selects, the computer operates normally until the next boot when the error message reappears.

Thought it is harmless, it is an annoyance and I'd like to fix it for him since I probably caused it to begin with.  Guilt is an awful emotion!

I've had no luck finding a solution in books on the XP Registry or on the Internet in various forums.  The Microsoft site recognizes an identical message with "MS-DOS" appearing where the word Windows appears in the error message, but has no record of my father-in-law's message.

I've looked in the Registry under the stated path and there is nothing there.  Two different registry repair programs have failed to pick this up.

This happened months ago so restoring a previous configuration seems out of the question now.  Should have done that immediately, but I don't see his system that often.  When he first called me about it I told him to hit Ignore and that seemed to fix things.

Can anyone help?  I need an idea of what to tweak in the registry to make a driver format valid, I guess.

Gordon Totty

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