[dayglored]

> ...I wasn't sure how to do that chkdsk thing...

Before anything else, please attempt to take a full backup of the disk, onto an external drive.

1. You need to do this with administrator privilege, so do it while logged in as the Administrator, or a user who is a member of the Administrators Group.
2. Open a Command Prompt ("DOS-box") window.
3. Type this command:
   chkdsk /f /r
4. Hit Enter.
5. Answer the question in the affirmative (type y).
6. Exit from the command prompt.
7. Restart (reboot) the computer. The CHKSDK program will run before Windows comes up. It will print a lot of status information for your amusement. Hopefully it will fix any problems it finds. Depending on the size of your disk and how much stuff is on it, CHKDSK could take anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours.
8. As soon as possible, take another full backup of the disk onto an external drive.

[deoetdoctrinae]

Thanks very much for the info. I just spotted an ad from Office Depot for a Western Digital 1TB external hard drive on sale for $54.99. Will be picking one up tomorrow and try out your instructions. Thanks again!

[deoetdoctrinae]

I backed up her drive to the WD external drive that I bought today. Did the safely eject thing, then did the chkdsk /f
/r command per your info...(You need to do this with administrator privilege, so do it while logged in as the Administrator, or a user who is a member of the Administrators Group.)

She is the only one that uses that computer, so I just assumed she had Administrator privileges. But when I entered that command, this shows up...access denied as you do not have sufficient privileges. You have to invoke this utility running in elevated mode.

I'm stymied for the moment. Any ideas as to how to gain those privileges?