CurlingSteve

Just out of curiosity, what happens if you ... (1) Disable the Wireless Connection. (2) Reboot. (3) Wait a little bit. (4) Enable the Wireless Connection. Does it work or hang at "Acquire..." until you repair?

Honda Boy's method might work, but I'd try this first. WAY back when I had an IBM PC with a hard drive that had a stuck spindle. I had to open the case and bang on the drive to get it spinning on each cold (as in overnight) boot. Once it loosened up, it would work all day. Fortunately the PC had a "flip-top" case so it was easy to open and get to the cards and drives. Who knows, a bit of thumping might get your drive spinning again, at least long enough to pull the data off. If that doesn't work, try the freeze trick (as a last resort in my opinion). In either case, if you get access copy off

You say they will open in Ubuntu, can you view the contents? Or do you just see a directory listing? I don't know Linux/Ubuntu but why not copy the files to a USB flash stick? Perhaps posting this question in the Linux forum will help. I'm very very new to Linux (Knoppix) and I'm having issues with mounting/reading/writing to drives, getting wireless to work, and so on. It's a bit tricky (to me) but I'm sure once one "learns the ropes" it's simple. Asking on the Linux forum might help.

Has this been a one time issue or does it happen often/repeatably? If it repeats, what are you running when it happens? ------ I saw the same message ONCE (soon after a Vista update) but not again. But my system has been stable since then. If this is like you've seen, I'd relax (for the moment). Otherwise, TheTerrorist_75's link that suggests removing the update would be worth trying.

Does anyone think cleaning the dust from the case (and perhaps reseating the cards) might help? (Or was this tried a long ways back). If that's not it, I'm thinking a bad memory card. BAD POOL errors sometimes occur from mismatched cards or upgrades placed in the wrong slot. (But these usually result in repeatable and unbootable failures, not the random fails you seem to see). Was a memory upgrade involved before this all started? Would a Repair Install of XP help? Personally, I'd try booting a Knoppix (Linux) CD just to check if the hardware was OK. -------- OOPS - I see reseating was suggest

No one, myself included, has asked what Themes or Extensions you use with Firefox. If you post that, someone might recognize a known problem. Sometimes there are conflicts among them (T's and E's) that will lead to a problem. I'd have to look back in my backups to give you an example, but I've seen it before. A fresh profile, linked to recent Theme(s) and Extension(s) usually will solve any issues.

Get ...... Whatever you want. Rock On!! Happy Birthday

Burning ethanol is clean, producing it is not. As said before, when you factor in the cost (both carbon and dollars) of growing, plowing/harvesting, and fertilizing the benefit is marginal. In my opinion, ethanol based fuels only move the pollution from the consumption (cars) area to the production (ethanol) plant. Now I'd agree that if the production plant properly handle its carbon/pollution output then there is a benefit having it localized. And I guess moving the "smoke" from the cities to somewhere else might be a good thing. But there's a lot of energy (and pollutants) created to power (

As you seem to have experienced, I've seen Firefox "suddenly" break or act strangely, even when I'm not personally playing around with it. But for the most part, it's one of the better browsers (my favorite) around. I like that I can change almost any setting (at my own risk) to make it look and behave the way I prefer. "Out of the Box" it's quite stable and reliable. ---------- Is there any chance you moved windows around to look at something else then closed out? (That might explain the repositioning). ---------- Or was there a crash/reboot? (Grasping at straws a bit here). I get a similar s

I've edited the above post a bit.

Did anything update in between? A Theme or Extension? That might have changed a setting (or reset it to a default) that changed the positioning. --------- Just in case, you might try copying the folder... C:\Users\<Your Account Name>\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles ... to a secondary folder for quick backup/restore. --------- I do this at least daily, since I tend to play around with settings a lot. If I screw things up, I use Firefox's Profile Manager to switch to a working profile. You can open the PM this way... Start, Run, Firefox -p --------- If you open the ...\Profiles f

I agree. Sleep mode is fine for day to day use. But when I have the time, I like to do a full reboot. (And I only mean once or twice a week). This lets programs fully integrate their updates, purges some temporary files, and (usually) will improve performance (no guarantee).

Thank You Everyone! Steve

I assume you've looked in Personalize under Themes to make sure "Windows Vista" is the active theme. And that "Windows Aero" is the color scheme.

Google "BartPE" and see if this is what you are looking for.