I took the machine to a computer shop and they said the drive was scrambled and had to do a complete re-install of Vista & all the updates (they did upgrade to servive pack 2). He said that Service Pack 2 has caused a lot of problems. We talked about Win 7 and he made a good pitch for it. He has been using it for sometime now (he is a beta-tester) and loves it. He says it is just Vista with all the problems fixed and not a complete new re-write like Win NT, or XP was when they came out.

I used to try and keep up with the latest software, now I try and just stick with stuff that just works ( I hate re-learning new stuff).

I never lost data from a crashed drive because I have seen so many others that have. I learned to back-up a LONG time ago. I nornally do dual back-ups incase I lose a back-up or one back-up is corrupt. I have been looking at 'Carbonite' as one of my back-up systems. Since it is off-site it would be protected in the event of a fire or theft, but off-site back-ups are slow, so I would still use my local external drives too. 160 gigs of data is way too much to lose and try to recover. Computers are wonderful, but there is something reassuring about a file cabinet full of your stuff too!! It took a long time for me to go 'paperless' ...