oh nooooo just had a great idea(lightbulb turned on).......if you spray painted the final project....sealed with an waterproof sealant ....you could actually have different areas of your yard,different colors of totems weeeeeee. hubby not going to like this one! lol

Hi, Sorry for the delay. And apologies for the long response. I attempted a system restore and somewhere along the way my computer had stopped booting up completely. While I never got the blue screen of death, I did get the black screen of purgatory. ;-) Apparently (based on later events) the system restore never completed. At some point during the process I got a black screen with a white arrow/cursor (perhaps it was just after the "starting windows" screen). And it just stopped there. I manually shut down (turned off the switch at the surge protector) and tried restarting, but the computer couldn't get past that black screen! Well, at that point I started trying different things: - trying to boot up in safe mode (didn't work; got stuck at the same point), - trying the 'start up repair' option on the same screen as the safe mode option. That didn't work either and it was during these attempts that I got a blue screen saying, "a problem has been detected and windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer." Etc. But there was no way to shut down, so I had to do it the old fashioned way: turn off at the surge protector. Then on to trying something else. - trying the Windows Memory DIagnostic Tool, which I found inadvertently while poking around the same screen general menu area as the above. The WMDT started a two-part scan and froze during part 2. While it was scanning, though, it did display a "Status:" message indicating that hardware problems were detected and that I should contact the computer manufacturer. Well, instead I called the delightfully honest and knowledgeable computer guy who built my computer for me. :-) (more on that below) Finally, I again tried booting up and ended up on the same screen as the one where I found the WMDT option. At the top it simply said "Windows 7," which I thought was just a heading, but it was an actual option. So, I selected it just to see what would happen, and suddenly it took me all the way to the desktop screen! I had/have no idea how that happened! But once there, and after looking things over, I realized that the system restore I attempted earlier never went through successfully. Neither did my Pale Moon uninstall. Well, I skipped attempting another system restore and instead did the following: - again used geekuninstall to remove Pale Moon (this time also choosing the "forced removal" option, which ended up removing all registry items as well; I hadn't done that the first time), - shut down properly (first time I could do that in a while!) and fully (i.e. not the 'restart' option) and restarted manually, which finally took me through to the desktop as it should! - ran all scans (AV, MBAM, SAS) as complete scans, all of which were successful and detected no problems! Since then I have had no problems booting up or shutting down and no crashes of FF. :-) So, as far as I can determine just from the computer's behavior, it was probably all caused by using the 64-bit Pale Moon. :-/ Btw, my computer guy was going to come over and physically look at the computer (based on the computer's behavior and the status message I got (above), he suspected harddisc issues). But after telling him that I am now able to reboot and that everything is pretty much back to normal, we will be setting up a time and he will be able to access the computer remotely and do various checks. Now, in response to posts made since my previous one: owbist - Thanks for the link. :-) But I don't have the disc necessary to do that. DA - I was watching either You Tube videos or videos at the 'watchseries' site (mentioned here at this forum on occasion). Once in a while I watch old American TV shows from that site, but it never gave me any issues. And it seems that it really wasn't the problem this time either. It was just during the viewing of them that PM or FF would crash; more a symptom than the main problem. mikie - Thanks for your further suggestions! I never had a chance to read them before my journey into limbo, and now that things are working I'm afraid to mess with success at the moment by doing something I could easily mess up! :-D But I'll definitely bookmark this thread for future reference. Thanks to all for your feedback!

You can indeed buy an OEM version and save a few bucks. My three XP versions are all OEM, I had to buy some hardware each time though. (Earlier it had been serious hardware like a hard drive, video card and the like but later I bought XP with a cheap mouse and another time a fan to qualify) OEM comes in an envelope, no box to throw away. There is no difference in the retail or OEM program, just the rules are different. Buying OEM means you have no support from Microsoft, all updates and patches are available to you of course. All needed support is supposed to be provided by the seller of the software I had a problem with activation that MS was not willing to allow till I phoned and spoke with a help desk lady. It involved a computer I had built but which refused to run smoothly. Over time I swapped an MSI and Asus motherboard 3 times, the third time was too much for MS as they thought I was using this on multiple computers. After my call I was activated but have refused to change much on that machine since LOL, plus I have it working right now anyway.

That song usually makes me shiver but their version did nothing for me. Sorry to be so negative but it was too modulated and harmonious. I missed the raw, elemental quality that Jeff Buckley's rendition has with his lone guitar. However it was cute the way Celine Dion walked out and the guys still managed to keep their cool. Here is a link that might be useful: Jeff Buckley