Mine's been acting crazy too. Let's hope they both last us a bit longer! I'd like to make it to graduation.

I switched to Mac earlier this year... I'm pretty happy with that choice. I lost all faith in Microsoft...

Susan... have you done a windows update lately? There are some "bugs" in the current updates that do exactly what you are describing! Oddly enough, if you call Microsoft about it, they offer to SELL you the "fix"... :/

Matt,

I know a couple of people at work who swear by Macs. I've considered giving them a try, but I'm afraid of not being able to access old files and such. I've thought about maybe getting a used Mac laptop to play around with, just to see how I'd like it.

Sasha,

My computer downloads the updates automatically and then notifies me when they need installation. Come to think of it, I did install one pretty recently. That's real nice of Microsoft to mess up your computer and then try to sell you the fix...not. No wonder people are switching to Macs!

The repair installation I did took me back to the base XP install. Since I didn't want security holes and such, I had to reinstall SP1 and the other updates. I hope they removed the bad update.

What you could try next time is a SYSTEM RESTORE (Start menu-->Accessories-->System Tools) That feature has saved my @$$ plenty of times. Simply choose a recovery date just before your computer went hinky. You wont lose any documents or email you've had since then either. It should also fix any corrupted registry files. Of course this option is only viable for as long as you can boot into WinXP.

Im very careful when updating WinXP and give it a month or so after a patch comes out before I update it. The way MS is doing patches these days, patching patching patching what they once said was the most secure OS they ever made is downright disgraceful. Almost makes me want to switch over to a MAC, but then again those arent REAL computers. ;-)

Hi Mac,

System Restore has saved me many a time as well. It wouldn't have helped me with the problem I was having yesterday, though. I could not even bring Windows up at all. The only thing I could do was boot with the installation CD-ROM and do a repair. Whatever the problem was, it was pretty bad.

Ugh, well the rule of thumb is, if you'r computer is fine now and you dont experience it again anytime soon, it was a software bug. Hardware problems in my experience tend to be problems that simply wont go away. Too often though it's a whodunnit riddle. :-O

Mac,

I agree...I don't think this is a hardware problem, because it seems to be fine for now. My previous computer up and died on me from hardware problems. (I suspect it was caused by a power surge...and yes I had a surge suppressor, but it was old.) You're right...in those cases the problems just get worse and worse and don't go away.