Hi
Thanks for replies. The engineer/technician or whatever he was managed to save my data and files and they are now safe and sound. What he couldn't do was recover the laptop to its original settings and said that without a disk and the means to do it (the laptop had nothing in the Bios to allow him to do it) - it was a crappy thinkpad T40 and a 'refurbished' job, so the restore ability had been either wiped or switched off.
Anyway, it has gone to silicon heaven.
I want to protect this one by making sure the restoration is possible if the same issue happens again. He suggested something about creating a backup to restore original settings. It's this (I think) that I need an idiots guide of how to do
I have RTFM and it tells you how to create a backup disk - but then says it will not be 'bootable' ..