Thanks, Wendy. System m/b failed. No problem - I had a RAID 1 array (2 hard
drives in parallel, mirroring to each other) so data was doubly safe (bitter
laughter).

Decided I was too busy (repotting etc) to fix it myself, & took it to the local
hardware shop. They replaced a $300 m/b with a $90 one; then, when a hiccup
apparently developed with rebuilding Win XP for the new m/b, decided to save
time & do a clean install of Windows. Bloody hell! Most of my data was on a
separate partition thank the Lord. But I lost *everything* that wrote to the
registry, or was installed in the "Program Files" directory. That means nearly
all of my apps don't work & have to be reinstalled. And any data that
applications saved in Win XP's "Documents & Settings" was lost.

So my internet connection & apps are now up & running, but there's lots of work
ahead re-installing. I could have taken it back & demanded a quality m/b but,
to be honest, my 'puter isn't going anywhere near that mob again. At least they
gave me a long term loan of a hard drive they put a ghost of my system on, so
I'm slowly recovering lost data like my diary & contacts list, and (vitally) my
financial management software that communicated directly with the bank.

I can see why they had a problem rebuilding - with their drive connected, my
computer freezes at least once a session.

One day I'll get back to all the pics in my camera!


On Fri, 8 Dec 2006 21:56:57 -0800, "wendy7" wrote:

Dave! I have missed you here. What have you been up to?
Dave Gillingham
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