It all started Friday night, when I tried to open a program that decided it didn’t want to work anymore. It was time. I had everything – except my bookmarks and favorites ($%!@$!! :duh: ) backed up to my new Maxtor 300GB external hard drive.

I started to sweat. I got the jitters from my elbows down to the tips of my fingers, my head swam a little bit and my heart was racing. I slowly inserted the pretty fuchsia colored Operating System Reinstallation CD. I closed the CD drive. I shut down my computer, and I rebooted. I closed my eyes and said a little prayer, then I hit F12, and I proceed to reformat my entire hard drive, completely wiping it clean and starting over.

Three hours after I got off the phone with the Dell Guy in India, I was feeling a bit euphoric. It was like I just bought a new wicked fast computer. The hard part was getting everything reinstalled – all the programs I use, and have bought online and downloaded with activation keys that were lost in my primary e-mail account (woops, didn’t back that one up) – restoring my major e-mail backup files in Outlook – it all went surprisingly well. Seriously. I’m waiting for that big dingy .wav file to tell me my new installation is corrupt. Expecting my CD drives to open and close on their own and for windows to go nuts on my monitor.

For now, I’m a happy girl with a lot of space available on my hard drive. I have my email. I have my programs back. I did not lose all of my data, and I’m grateful it didn’t come to that.

Now I just need a nap, and I’ll be ready to get back to work on my new improved fully functioning 4 year old Dell!

I’ve also replied to many of you via e-mail. If I missed anyone, I do apologize. I was trying to stay current through webmail until I had my outlook configured again. Drop me another mail if you haven’t heard back from me by now. Thank you!