Thanks, Bill. We'll see what the stress level is like when the shop finally gets back to me with the diagnosis. Or, more likely, when they don't and I've called them a bunch of times and finally retrieved my PC after days of waiting. If the drive is truly ruined, then the biggest loss will be my e-mail archive. My work per se will be safe, but losing all the little items of correspondence that go into planning a product will niggle me no end. Needless to say, I wish I had bought an external drive and software that mirrors my entire system, very specifically including installed apps; the last time I looked, though, that was kind of costly for a Windows-based system.