Thank you everyone for the tips and hand holding! Having just gotten out of a morning meeting, I'm working studiously on the problem now. I'm also keeping in mind that after a point, it's not worth my time and salary to try and fix a 2.3g hard drive, but my bosses and I agree that if I -- the lone office PC Tech who's pretty darn new to the business -- learn something out of the whole experience, it's worth a little extra devotion. I wish we did have a version of UNIX/Linux to pop in it real quick. Sadly, I'm still quite the newbie when it comes to Linux; I've yet to work with an employer who uses it where *I* can play with it, and up until now I've been too poor to do much of any experimenting at home. As our office is moving the first of October, we're planning on selling a number of machines to whomever wants them. That combined with my newfound living wages might just get me a spare machine or two where I can finally, FINALLY, start playing with Linux at home. Meanwhile, I'm doing one final round of swapping cables and hard drives and am getting strange results that differ from the first round ... suggesting to me that the MB could even be screwy (though I still have the same HD problem when I put it in a known working machine). I have to say though, it's now only 4 weeks into my first real job out of college. I already feel like a genius compared to 2 weeks ago, when I felt like a genius compared to my first day at work! - Mary; soaking up info as fast as her little brain will soak. P.S. Thanks for the book recommendation Malke. I recently bought the 11th addition ... guess I got in on it a little late! I'll let you know if I can use the chapter you spoke of. _______________________________________________ techtalk mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.linux.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/techtalk
