You guys are funny! If he was sneaking around my computer, it would be divorce court. My husband and son are terrified to go near my machines (2). Both are used for work and if things got messed up I'd have to fix it. He obsesses over his photos. He belongs to a photo group which meets weekly and they have competitions. They also display their photos in hospitals and libraries. He's actually sold a bunch (shocked). I have no interest in photos except to look at them. He will spend weeks working on one photo. He's not a photographer, just a hobby which he loves to do. The computer he uses is really a great machine. It has taken such abuse, I still stand in awe that it works. Hubby knows absolutely nothing about computers and doesn't want to. Leaves all the problems for me to fix. He has numerous photo programs on the machine and will have them running at the same time. He uses AOL and his photo buddies will be emailing back and forth sending each other photos to critique. Plus he has Media Player booming with all the flashing colors across the screen (he has 6 speakers hooked up to the computer. He's a classical/ jazz lover and copies music to the computer and also burns CDs. All this is going on while he's working in photoshop. Oh, I forgot Quickbooks, that's always running too. Best part, when he's through for the night, he doesn't shut anything down. He shuts the computer down without closing anything. The computer freezes and stays that way until the next day. Or he does a manual shutdown complaining about the machine. Its truly a sad state of affairs. I've given up on him and leave him to this poor, abused machine. Someone tell me why it still works, buried under the table surrounded by speakers and wires? And I'm thinking of adding Ram... Jane

There are partition size limits, and your new drive exceeds these limits for some formats. Did you first format the drive? Your earlier drives may have be pre-formatted. If the new 160 GB drive has been formatted as one partition, it is either formmated as a NTFS drive or used special extentions for a FAT32 drive. You will loose this special formatting if you format the drive again as a FAT32 system. Refer to instructions that came with the drive. If the drive has not been formatted, then you can not write to it until it is formatted. NTFS or FAT32 ? NTFS provides greater partitions and more reliable disk operation. NTFS uses log files to keep track of all disk activity. Win XP can use this journal to repair files after a system crash. Windows 95, 98, ME can not recognize NTFS volumes. You need a FAT32 volume as the boot volume for these operating systems. This restriction does not apply to files on a network. The boot record must be on a FAT32 partition for these earlier Windows sytems. On partitions greater than 8 GB, NTFS manages the space more efficiently than FAT32. The maximum partition size for a FAT32 drive created by Widows XP is 32 GB; A single NTFS volume can be up to 16 terabytes (16,384 GB) using default settings. The Fdisk utility in Windows 98/ME can make a partition greater than 32 GB on a FAT32 disk. Use a bootup disk from one of these two systems to do this. After formatting the extra large partition, Win XP can use it. The main reason for using FAT32 is compatiblity to the older system and/or software. If you are constructing a multi-boot system and one of these sytems is the older Windows system, the FAT32 system is needed for the older version of Windows. If you have only Windows XP or Vista, I recommend NTFS. Its a good idea to scan a new disk for bad sectors before using. Presumably, the manufacturer has already scanned and marked off the bad sectors, but I did have one 80 GB external disk where this had not been done. It gave me trouble until a complete scan was performed. A few bad sectors were found and marked off. After that, the disk performed flawlessly. So first, format the disk and then scan for bad sectors. This will take some time for a 160 GB disk, but it well worth the effort. If the disk is already formatted and is what you want, scan it before using. With a disk of 160 MB, I suggest that you break this into 2 partitions of approximately 80 GB each. The partitions will not be quite as large as 80 GB because part of the space is used for file management and directories. Put the operating system on the first partition and use the second for data. The next question: Do you at any time have two hard drives connected to the computer? If so, the hard drive with the operating system must have its jumper set to "master" and the other disk to "slave" (assuming that both drives are connected to the same cable). While setting up a new drive using the existing computer, you may find it necessary to switch the jumpers a few times depending on the job at hand. Hopefully, your computer's BIOS is capable of auto-recognizing the hard drives and can make settings accordingly, else this has to be done manually. Please let us know if any of this information was useful.

so then in your reality every single tablet out there is a theft from apple? then every single pc would be a theft from IBM? these tablets are nothing like an ipad they do not have anything to do with apple and their oh so proprietary parts. What about the xoom or the acer or one of the other NAME brands guess that would hold for them too they are thieves? You do realize most all of the electronics are made in China even the ones that have the name brand stickers on them. If you go on that principle I guess we should never have had another car manufacturer ??? the original would be it because surely anyone else that choose to go into the manufacturing of them would be stealing?? It is called enterprise it is what business is all about. If they were stealing anything intellectual property or other wise you can bet your bottom dollar that Apple would have them in court already. technology progress is a fast paced industry it is natural that many companies, known or not, will be investing in the latest and greatest, that is what the business world is all about. Just because something is similar certainly does not mean it is stolen. They are being legally manufactured, with legal parts and legally sold, legal sales! There is nothing wrong with being a savvy shopper and going for a good buy. Everyone has that right. And should certainly never be made to feel that they are guilty of theft! or belittled for it.

Genes, no, I don't use hibernation or sleep or stand by. Let me run this thought through y'all. About the time the computer decided it didn't want to do internet, we had Comcast to come out to check why we got nothing but tiles. While he was here, he took note that we have five TV's and was using several splitters. He unhooked/uninstalled one of the tvs and it got rid of the tiles. Could the splitters have anything to do with this problem? What is such a riddle to me is, why does one computer work on the Ethernet and the other one will not? Hmmmmmm? I've had another AT&T technician back to the house and he found nothing and I took it back to the computer guy and they, again, found nothing. The AT&T guy did suggest hooking up a router and using that. What's the general thought on that idea?