hughv

I've had good luck with Ophcrack: [url]http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsvista/buyorupgrade/upgradeadvisor.mspx[/url] All you need is one PW for an Admin account, and it finds mine very quickly.

My HP only gets an hour. I think you'll find a battery rating at the HP site.

This seems to be a definite reformat. Even at my rate, the time spent to repair this machine would cost as much as new Dell. If he doesn't have install disks, he almost certainly "borrowed" all his "costly" software. I'd even be uncertain about saving the data, as it may …

Have you run chkdsk /f on this drive? I'm new here-apparently the sticky about no support questions in this forum is no longer valid?

You have a virus-probably "Orkut w32.USBworm Do you have an up to date anti virus installed? See here for removal instructions (I haven't tried them). [url]http://johndasfundas.blogspot.com/2006/07/how-to-remove-orcu-virus.html[/url]

Try chkdsk /f on both drives. Do you have S.M.A.R.T. turned on? This usually enabled in the BIOS and may give you some useful info.

I'm Hugh and I'm new to this site. It looks very interesting, especially as there seems to be a lot experts hanging out. I'm retired, like computers and reading, and I used to live on Lawn Guylen, but I wised up and moved to Annapolis.