New machine, fresh OS (XP Pro), installed all of my applications, so time for diag's and tuneups...
AnalogX's NetStat Live (a net bandwidth and cpu monitor) had been sitting quietly in the lower corner tabulating usage statistics on everything it can monitor including CPU usage (although, since I am running a Core 2 Duo, I have no idea whether it was just displaying one CPU or an average of both cores).
I ran Ccleaner and as expected it found many issues in the registry. After unchecking the broken shortcuts that I was going to fix manually I clicked on fix all problems (and stupidly did not let it back up the registry -- never again!!!) and let it do its thing. Upon my next reboot NetStat Live came up but is no longer displaying the CPU usage of the machine. This also happened a couple of months ago when I was doing some maintenance on my housemate's dual-core AMD box but was not worth investigating since he does not use the meter (I do when I am SA'ing). Any wisdom on what key or other repair procedure may have caused this would be most appreciated so that I can get it running again fully functional...
TIA for any help