I have been fighting with my computer for the last 6 months, repairing drivers and os files. The signifgent other, allowed the sytem to go with out virus protection for the last 6 months.

I cleaned up all registries but no luck, constantly getting driver errors as such, couldnt install or uninstall programs, what a nightmare it has been.

So i tell the better half im going to have to ferfrm a total refromat of the hardrive and OS, and i need the recovery disk that came with the PC, she had lost the CD.

Got on the phone with Gatewayhad to order a recovery disk, the cost $20 dollars US. I thought to my self why the heck would they not post a system recover disk for download on there support page.

Any way i am finding most sytems these days especially laptops are already come with the recovery program allocated to another drive.

I just think it sucks that PC oems dont have that kind of support located on there websites for download.

I had almost 120 gig of information to back up, so i went and purchased another 160 gig portable external harddrive to back up all my file that were created.

I think to myself all systems go. I perform the recovery on the harddrive and bring back to condition it was coming out of the box new, I quickly install my norton 360 to start protecting it and update all hardware drivers and windows updates, all sytems are go at this point, im very satisfied that the computer is working well now. I go to scan all backed up data on my next external harddrive for viruses and or file errors before i bring back to my pcs hard drive, guess what?

My new hard drive crashed or took a sh%t during the transfer, only was able to save 6 gig of info out of 120.

Its all gone, I am ready to shoot myself..... as all my lively hood documents are gone pics manauals programs, you name it, its gone.

Luckily though I have several back up hardrives and was able to get 90% of all my stuff back but the signefgant other lost everything..

I guess she learned a valuable lesson as so did I, dont go with out virus protection.

A-Z