I have a lot of respect for Linux users but never tried that hat on. BTW, remember Red Hat OS? Where did that go? Been dealing with Windows misery since way back in the day. Learned a ton of MS-DOS commands back when 5 1/2" floppy disks were still being used and "Edlin" meant something. That's why when OTCE starts talking about BATCH files I know exactly what he means. I used to make batch files for all kinds of purposes in MS-DOS.
Pre-Microsoft mania there was actually an MS-DOS based OS called GEOS that did exactly what Windows does but I think it did it better for that time. My first PC was a Commodore 64 portable. It weighed a ton but I could take it wherever I got "temporarily" deployed. I actually learned some programming with it so I understand a bit about that stuff. Can't remember how many times I dropped it or why it went away, but I'm sure I broke it during one move or another. When I finally got my own real home PC it had Microsoft Windows 3.1 or something like that. In the late 80's I surfed the internet from England on a 9.9 bps baud modem. I was totally jazzed to upgrade to a 14.4 bps!
I've take apart and put together so many PC's in the past but paying child support for most of my life has made it tough to have the latest hardware. Still, when I did come into some money I sprang for the best gaming rig I could afford that I had someone else put together for me on the Cyberpower website. It's what I'm using now but I hardly ever connect it to the internet. It's processes and services are stripped down to barely nothing to improve performance thanks to some very handy tips from BlackViper.
That's why having my internet/Hal computer die hits hard. It's at 71 percent on scandisk checking the free file clusters so I'll be able to see soon if what I've done so far fixes my issue. May have to take other advice from forum members and go out and find an old XP rig at a garage sale or on E-Bay, craigslist, whatever. I actually LOVED that operating system. Never had a bit of trouble with XP. <sighs>
Thanks again for the tips. Please wish me luck or say a prayer or both.
![Grin ;D](http://www.ultrahal.com/community/Smileys/default/grin.gif)