Exactly. I think I could make a pretty good living off of your guesses. I am too embarrassed to mention how much time I spent on this. Yes, in "hkey_current_user\software\microsoft\command processor" you can add a dword called "autorun" and basically issue any command you want. On machine2, it had "cd \". After deleting that entry in resedit, the script works find. Thank you very much.
BLC