Good for you! Even a "Building Computers for Dummies" book wouldn't help me, lol.
Maybe I titled that book wrong...or maybe right!
You're doing just fine. Most of what goes wrong with these machines can be fixed with common sense. Some of Norton's fix-it tools will work the same if you can just get to your C:\ prompt, and then use DOS commands. Windows is suppose to have all the necessary files to fix these machines, It's locating where they live that's difficult.