F2 did it.  And there is an instruction at the bottom of the first
screen to appear on booting which says "F2 for bios, F10 for
diagnostics, F12 for [?]"

I shifted the video expand line from disable to enable.  When I booted
up again I was able to get a full screen for the DOS word processing
program.  However only the top half of the full screen was in fact
enabled: the bottom half was empty and stayed empty.  Nevertheless the
program is more nearly usable than it had been.

Thanks for the help.

This answer has not been rated.

FINALLY! This has been nagging me for almost a year! Right on the money.

>I know it drives me nuts when I can't identify a tune.

I've been trying to find out what this track is for over a decade, so yes, I do
know what its like to go nutZ because of this! 5 stars for giving me EXACTLY
the info I wanted and then an extra bonus star here (*) for finding those other
USEFULL links for me.  Have a tip...
mindwarp

Great piece of software, does it right and is very productive.  I
didn't expect to be catered to with this

Great that is exactly what I wanted to know.  Thanks...

Hi:
  I believe you did correctly identify the error, but the solution
wasn't one I could use, since I have system restore turned off on my
system (it does tend to use up quite a bit of space, and slows down
the system).
  Instead, I tried the "repair" function off the Windows XP disk, and
that seemed to work ok, albeit it took about an hour and 20 minutes to
actually run.  It seemed to want to change almost everything on the
system.
 thx, Jon

This answer has not been rated.

This answer has not been rated.

Thanks izzard-ga - that should do it!
Thanks also to tehuti-ga and lot-ga.

The problem was not solved but I appreciate the effort put in to try and solve it.

Thanks a lot, a fully satisfying answer.