I surprisingly ran into this same issue. I've called HP before, the first time being when i took my new Pavilion Slimline out of the box and the hard drive was not being recognised. I called and was immediately told that it was no longer under warranty. I said i had just bought it about 4 hours ago at a major retailer. I was told it didn't matter, apparently it was an older model that was on the store shelves for some time now. Four calls and three hours later my computer was working, sort of. I had a few calls in the past 9 months, usually for not booting properly or at all. I'm still waiting for recovery discs from about 9 months ago. Last night i came home and my computer was frozen. I had to reboot it. It ran the CHKDSK (again) and afterwards i was missing about 100GB of data. I called HP today. After he said his greeting i opened with "pending hard drive failure". There was no talk of recovery discs. He had me run the hardware diagnostics. Surface scan : HD535-2W. The fun lies in finding a service location in Calgary. He said they had service centres & partners EVERYWHERE. Their server was offline so we couldn't get it from their website. He gave me businesses to call. In a city of over 1000000 people you'd think there would be SOMEWHERE i could go to have the hard drive replaced. He was very helpful. I just wish their computers were too. It would save me all of these calls, from which i am taking a break. This would be the first time i got someone who really listened to me too. It's really nice when that happens.

first thing to try is a full power down to reset everything, turn power off to the pc, router, modem everything. let it sit for about 5 mins, then power up in this sequence, the modem first and let it get fully lit up, then the router let it fully light, then the main pc once it is fully up you can then power up any other computers. Quite often doing a power down then a full power up of the full system will fix those kinds of problems, the modems do need to be powered off like that on occasion. let us know if that helped at all. If it does not help try a speed test to see if you can get any indication of what is happening to your DSl. Speedtest.net speed-test page do you have a firewall on it? what security programs do you run and is the pc fully updated?

I think someone mentioned that what you posted, the registry change wasn't necessarily bad but could be from a program being removed. I wonder if there is a way to find out if you were actually infected with something? This is why I suggested the Panda scan because it would have told you. btw, make sure you do windows updates. I personally would get rid of Mcafee. I know you paid for it but it's a resource hog. For backups I have multiple hard drives, they are cheap. I have an external enclosure that holds 2 drives. I have a computer running windows XP, installed the Maxtor Maxblast program and use that to back up to the larger drives. As far as I know, they don't have a program (Maxtor) like this for Vista but I could be wrong. What it will do is back it up as files verses a file that you have to unpack. If you back up your C drive, you will see every folder on the C drive in your backup.

Really great inputs from all of you. Thank you for taking your time reading and responding! There are some great ideas here, but unfortunately, we will not be able to make all the changes due to various reasons. For example, we will not change the framing of the windows because that will require extra permit (I think); We will not re-do the walls and the ceiling in the wood room so we preserve its historical look (and to keep the budget down); etc. But @kaismom, you gave me some idea for re-doing the kitchen. (Love it in SketchUp since it doesn't cost anything to tear stuff down!) I moved the fridge to behind the division wall and made it tall cabinets all across. I realize that this will make the galley kitchen look even narrower, but it got the fridge out of the way, and since this is a single cook kitchen, being a little narrow is not too big a problem (I have about 39" of clearance between the counter top edge to the other cabinet wall.) I also moved the dishwasher to the left size because now I could put a 33" drawer base by its side. Now, I have two 2-basket trash pullout (for trash and recyclables). Not sure if that's an overkill. The only non-drawer cabinet is there because the code require access to the propane shutoff which is hidden behind that cabinet. (We will not use propane but the pipe is already there.) However, I still face the choices what to do with the opening at the kitchen: leave it completely open, have a one tier open counter, or have a small breakfast bar. I personally like the look of the one tier counter, but I have no good aesthetic sense; hence I appreciate your input. Currently, I'm putting this IKEA VÄRDE drawer unit for the two non-open options. Either way (one level or bar), I have a 40" opening from the short wall to the other side of the opening. I wonder if that's too narrow for the kitchen installation. But with the hallway at 39" wide, and the opening at 40", I can't foresee any problem with getting the appliances and cabinets in. Hope someone can point it out if it will be a problem. Without further ado, let me take you on a tour in our newly remodeled house. Again, click on an image for its full size. Overview. North is up. Living room, seen from the wood room. Looking into living room standing at the front door. Same exact angle, but this time, we put in a bar (open counter or tiered) at the kitchen. You probably have to bring up the full size to see the difference. View from the couch. This picture explains why we choose dark cabinets in the wood room -- so that they do blend in. Now, what if we have a bar (open counter or tiered) at the kitchen? A look at the living room from the desk area. Okay, this series is important. which option would you vote for? Open? One level counter? Tiered breakfast bar? Here is a look into the galley kitchen. Three options again. The wood room.