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.  

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