Without warning it struck. Saturday 21st April. 12.30pm New Zealand time. I was taken completely by surprise. We've all had to suffer because of it all weekend. My ACER Extensa 3002 Laptop, which has been such a pain in the past. Last time it packed in was 11 months ago, was the vehicle for the storm once more. I clicked on the Internet Explorer shortcut on my desktop Quick Launch Bar. No internet. Strange. All three green lights were on the ADSL router. I noticed that my Norton's Antivirus had run out and needed renewal. I tried and I tried to renew it via a 'hacking tool' which I'd used previously. To no avail. I deleted it in its entirety and reinstalled it. Still no internet (there was a message on my sceen by now I had insufficient resources to load Internet Explorer? Strange where is all the RAM gone?). Norton's was finally installed then it asked for me to reboot my computer. I did and this was when the storm started .... I was unable to get back into the laptop as it stuck on the password at log in. No matter what I did I could not get back in. The storm hit then and I was swept away with raised voice and pounding fists. I swore and I swore. A trip to the Electronics shop I purchased it from three years ago did not help. The laptop is under extended warranty. But I was still told it would be weeks before it was repaired due to backlog. It was unlikely the hard drive. More likely a virus in the Windows XP operating system but I could take the restore CD back with me. Begruntled I agreed to bring the Laptop back Tuesday but back up my data onto my external drive in the meantime. Which took place all Saturday. NO entries for Saturday. I left the restoring until this morning. Restoring? Instead I had a relapse of the storm. The Restoration CD has a decompression error and so won't reinstall the Windows XP operating system and files. A dead Laptop in other words. My anger bubbled to the surface; the 6th time I've had 'problems' with a three year old laptop ... and up to now I've had to reinstall the ENTIRE lot; files, programs; formats - five times. It takes a week to do. All the Windows XP office gear; Corel Word Perfect; Corel Draw; Sound Therapy software; all 55GB of music and then added to Windows Media Player & now iTunes. Plus the songs need sorting ... that takes hours and hours. It is a real nightmare. I returned to the shop to obtain a replacement restore CD; they won't have one until tomorrow. I won't therefore be able to start the restore until Monday night. But if it still doesnt load up after the restore then I have to book it in for repair and wait weeks.Blog posts may be limited for a while until Laptop is restored to its former glory. I'm on Kristine's ACER computer to post this amid a silent tomb. All my music is on the external drive and it would take hours to add to her Windows Media Player.