[LearnsFromMistakes]

Wish I could help. I am avoiding Vista like the plague...

[metesky]

That’s the problem: She doesn’t have Vista! The damn update just took over and now the machine is about as useful as a door stop, four years of bookkeeping records gone to dust.

[metesky]

Thank you all for your help! Well thanks to everybody but you, martin! ;O)

Despite us running around like headless chickens for a while, the fix was fairly easy: As a last ditch effort before we in our ignorance, called for the Geek Squad, I went into "Setup" and clicked "restore settings" and bingo there she was!

The first thing that came up after the successful reboot was a MS message telling us that "a new security update has been installed." What a bunch of clowns over at MS!