Geez, scary stuff.

My son is still asleep or I'd ask him. (early Thurs. morn. in au.) When all this happened with my Compaq, they told me the same thing. I should have done the backups to cds myself as soon as I could. Well, I hadn't and it really annoys me that they expect people to do that themselves anyway.

The disc that came with my Compaq could only be used ONCE for some reason. My son tried to use it and it didn't work... corrupted, something. So then I was stuck with the Compaq CD which wouldn't work and no backups. I asked him quickly yesterday what we ended up doing and he couldn't really remember, but I think we ended up totally clean intalling Windows XP and having to start afresh.

I'm so sorry you're having these problems. At this point in time I'd probably be happier to pay someone else to help you do it than Compaq. I can't believe they want to charge you to help.

You're probably sick and tired of all this by now, but here's a site in case you need to clean install Windows XP
http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase...p_sg_clean.asp

ugh, good luck.