Oh, boy, Gerry, so sorry for your hard drive's demise! Just a question, would the information still be on the drive, just inaccessible to your computer? Could a professional make a copy of the drive? They say the contents of these things can be recovered even if erased, etc. Or have I been watching too many episodes of NCIS? Abby could do it! Yes, it's always wise to have several backups of important stuff, like designs and family photos. None of the media is 100% safe. Power surges, magnetic fields, scratched DVD's--by the way, don't ever leave a CD on a radiator, hee hee hee, ask me how I know. Good luck replacing things, and I hope you can get a computer without Vista! Force them to install XP for you or you won't buy it. If you can't get cooperation from the super electronic stores, go to a local small business that services computers, bet they can do something for you. Hugs, Marji

What a nightmare, but do shop around for XP, I have 3D and did the same, cost a bit more but lot cheaper than replacing 3D. Good luck with it all.

What a disaster Gerry, I hope you can replace your designs, sometimes they can read the died harddrive as Marjialexa said. I hope so for you.

What is going on around here? There seems to be an epidemic being reported in this forum!!! Is there a swine flu for computers? LOL

Is your problem with the harddrive or the computer itself? You can replace a 160 GB laptop harddrive for less than $100. ( I have done it all-too-many-times myself!) A smaller drive or a desktop drive for a lot less. This is a lot cheaper than a new computer generally. Depends on what you have and what you want, of course. If your drive failure is that the computer won't boot, you can often recover the files almost completely. The drive is seldom completely unreadable. It might be worth the effort to ask your computer store and/or a local computer repair shop. Good luck to you whatever you decide to do, and much sympathy and good wishes. (I've been there sooo many times... ) Hugs, Lois

Thanks for the reminder. I just backed mine up to CDs. Didn't take that long, but I've been putting if off for weeks.

Thanks for the reminder and sorry to hear you have suffered with loosing designs

I suppose I need to back up my files now. I have been trying to get them organized and I can't seem to quit downloading new ones. I should know better since I have lost a lot prior. Thanks for reminding us all to back up.Sara

Couple answers to you dear friends. I took my computer to a professional. He worked all day trying to retrieve my files. We called the company even to see if I could buy the disk to reload all the works inside...basically XP. The company doesn't even have them anymore as it's a 2002 computer (which didn't sound old to ME!) Told me to try some private web sites! Another warning for all you gals, if you don't have a disk to reinstall EVERYTHING that came on your computer, you can make a copy on a couple DVDs. THEN I could have gotten a new hard drive fairly cheap & have it all reinstalled. But no such luck now! Indeed, it must be swine flu for the computers! But I though us old folks were protected! hee hee

Sorry about all your problems gerry. Hope u get everything sorted out. *