well i wasn't away as long as i thought LOL

because to my complete surprise i managed to fix the computer all by myself LOL i went into pc world and bought an external hard drive to back everything up onto then walked up to the tech guys and giving a jolly good impression of sounding like i knew what the hell i was talking about LOL told them what was wrong and said "i'm thinking back up and a complete system restore" and they said yes LOL so that's what i did and by golly it worked LOL sort of sadly cos i had my eye on a rather gorgeous toshiba which was embossed on the case LOL well at least i've saved myself a bit of money :) so now i just need to find where the computer has hidden all my music and photographs cos i know they were restored onto the computer it told me so it just didn't tell me where LOL