Greetings, After a nasty power surge-- and I thank my lucky stars I own a good line conditioner--following one of those microsecond "brown-outs", I found I could no longer shut down my computer. all I could do was"restart the computer by pushing the letter r in the Shut Down screen. So I lost a lot of time seeking the answers. Finally, I was told to do a thorough scandisk in Dos. Since a lot of people did not learn computing during those days, I will outline the steps later. The thorough scandisk fixed the problem. And I did not lose a key. Steps for thorough scandisk in Dos. Bring up the Shut down screen. Hit letter m aas in ms Dos. press enter. Now you are in Dos. Type the word "scandisk" and do one space. Type the forward slash and immediately type the word"autofix" followed by another space. then type the word "surface". press enter. Obviously the quotes are not typed at all. The thorough scandisk takes 40 minutes. A sighted person can read the screen which will say whether you have any damaged clusters or not. Then tab to Exit and press Enter. type "exit" which puts you back in Dos again. type Exit and press Enter and you return to Windows whatever program you are running. My comment is that during these extraordinary weather conditions your computer is at the mercy of whatever electrical current is surging through the neighborhood. We have had 2 huge power surges in 5 days and several microsecond brown-outs. and on another point, I have found the tech suppport at HJ to have improved and to be excellent. Also, on another topic, does any one have a good backgammon game? Write me privately on that one--and not on list! Thanks to those who have helped me. Maybe I helped some one else--I sure hope so. and remember to get the strongest surge protector line conditioner you can find. Otherwise, this computer here would have been like a giant toaster--not a fun prospect. - Visit the jfw ml web page: http://jfw.cjb.net
