Aly, I just hate what has happened to your computer, what a mess! I'm not going to trash Gateway though because in the year and a half we've had ours, we haven't had a single problem. I'm knocking on wood right now too!! And I've had nightmares with Compaqs and Dells that I have had with my work, so who knows! I currently have an IBM Thinkpad for my work computer, and couldn't be happier with it either. Sometimes, I think they just fail, no matter where they come from.

I wish you lots of luck. Hopefully since you have posted so many things here, and probably other "public" places, you can recover a lot of your precious photographs and banners.

Wish I could help you...but I don't think you would want my "technical" help. It would be a sad, sad thing.

Logan