Thanks everyone for the input.  It was in fact the hard drive, which I suspected due to the jitter in the taskbar.  My local tech has a new HD on order, and she's going to put some more memory in as well, at about half the cost of a new computer.  She managed to get all my data backed up, so everything should be okay when I get my "baby" back.

:-)  Joyce in SE Ohio 



Kenneth Whyman wrote:

> ... As for your hard drive, should it prove to be the culprit, there are ways to
use an IDE to USB adapter to plug it into a working machine and save your
data without having to go through the bother of opening the good machine's
case. I keep such a device in my toolkit for just that occasion. Friendly
reminder: be sure to touch the metal case of the power supply before messing
around with any components inside your computer.  

            Do you want to signoff PCBUILD or just change to
                    Digest mode - visit our web site:
                   http://freepctech.com/pcbuild.shtml