Somewhere along the internet Hyway the machine was hi jacked by a virus or the like
. It started running slower and slower, and the harddrive would spin for 15 or 20 minutes at a time for no good reason. I fought the good fight using Norton's and several other of the like software to no avail 
.
So before we took it off to the repair center I saved all the pictures and Doc files as well as anything else I could think of.
Long story short. We went back to a bare harddrive {c:} and reloaded the Operating system and added a new harddrive {d:} with a firewall between the two. C: drive now operating system and programs, D: drive for storage of Doc's, pictures and data.
I was in a good mood until I found that I forgot to save two files. All my email addresses are now gone along with all my internet favoites.
Tonight we start saving a paper copy
of our email addresses as well as our Favorites. Once a month ought to cover us, maybe more often for others.