It's always better when something quits totally, then you know what the problem is for sure. I hope you backed up your most important files.

Any time I have even the smallest glitch, when I restart the computer I get out my floppies and back up important stuff. You are suposto do it before there's any problem, on a regular basis, but that's in a perfect world.

: The problems I encountered turned out to be symptoms of a faulty C drive. Eventualy the computer basically died. One day it just wouldn't even turn on. The computer now has a new hard drive and everything works (a Dell technician gave us a new one for free), however all of the data on the old hard drive may be lost for good. We are trying to get the data back, it may have to be sent to a data recovery specialist. The boot record is all messed up somehow and it prevents us from being able to access anything on the drive. Just thought I'd let you know in case anyone else reports similar symptoms. -Seth