| Gary
You may find the CD key is on a label stuck on the bottom of your laptop. I think your plan is exactly the right one, from what you have described I think your hard drive is failing and thus some of the boot sectors have become corrupt. It may have affected some of your date (files as well) but you should be able to get most of it off with Ratty's caddy once you have the new OS and harddrive installed, the pain will be reinstalling all the othere applications.
Once you have the external hard drive as well then it's worth using some back up software to not only copy your data but also take a complete immage of your harddrive so that you can do a full restore. there is plenty of software around that will do it for you some of it freeware or share ware. PM me if you want names/links
__________________ Give a hungry man a fish and he will eat for a day
Teach a hungry man to fish and he will buy a bad hat
Talk to a hungry man about fishing and you are a consultant.
Safe diving
Pete  |