I have begun the lenghty process of backing up my entire computer, in anticipation of erasing the hard drive this evening. I still haven't been able to make it play video correctly, and anything to do with explorer has been deathly slow, so now I'm going to erase absolutely everything and start over. If it all works, great. If it doesn't, I'm going to take Sarah up on her offer to drag a new laptop across the pond with her. Since laptops are about $500 cheaper in the states than they are in France, I had thought I simply would wait until I came back. But my computer is really useless - I can't even work on photos without it dying horribly. So something drastic needs to happen. If you don't hear from me for a while, you'll know the computer is dead, dead, dead. Let's hope it doesn't come to that....

ummmmm, i know it's not as exciting as yours is, but there is a computer sitting right next to yours that will function even if yours doesn't. unless this whole harddrive erasure thing is catching, in which case, don't you dare even think of doing it.