My seeds went in the mail today! I really wanted to get them out earlier, but it's only because I started early that I managed to get so many out just in time! I started working on packing the seeds a couple of weeks ago, which is good because it's hard to ignore a pathetic, come-play-with-me kitten for very long! I would stand at a table and pack seeds until she started climbing up my leg, then give up. I'd hoped to finish up Monday and mail on Tuesday, and I've learned that it's always good to aim for a day earlier than the real deadline. I ended up finishing up packing yesterday and mailing today. I had made a document with each player's name and gone through all the lists and copied and pasted what I planned to send. Then I alphabetized the list, printed it, and used that so I could make up the right number of packets of a seed, and keep track. Later I would look at the list of who was getting what and make up the individual packets. Yesterday was the day I started to sort everyone's seeds (which takes forever, so I really should have started that before) and guess what else happened yesterday? My laptop's mother board died! With no little sounds or weird warning signs, I just suddenly had no display. (I wasted a bit of time on the phone with Dell finding out what the problem was. I'd hoped it was "just" the screen and I could just hook the laptop up to a big monitor--no such luck!) But I have this ancient frankenstein desktop that is my backup computer, so I was going to be fine. But wait--that list of what I planned to send to whom--I never backed it up, I can't get it, it's stuck on the dead computer! Angela's list to the rescue! I used the desktop computer (and immediately wrote out Patty's address before something else went wrong) and used the search function to see who was asking for all the seeds I'd packaged up. It was a little tedious when looking for a particular type of salvia, since I had to scan through all the salvias, but for the most part each search was really fast. I got everything packaged up, used the computer to print out my postage, went off to the PO to buy stamps and get it officially sent off. I came home and wanted to email Patty the DC, but the computer had locked up. I restarted it, and...it was dead. "Unmountable boot volume." Dell says this means the hard drive died. So in 24 hours, my 2 computers have died! (and yet my mom has allowed me to touch her computer...) Thank goodness the darn thing stayed alive long enough for me to use Angela's list and get the seeds sorted without dragging everything to my mom's house! I don't live my life like my computer is about to die, and I guess I should! I do back things up, but not every day or even every week. I've been thinking that maybe I could have a memory stick in the USB port, and get some software that will back up anything added to the computer that day. When the drive is full, I'll burn a CD of it. Does anyone do something like that, and what do you use? For the next big swap, I think I'll print out a lot more stuff instead of just keeping it on the computer!

I would suggest putting free antivirus and malwarebytes on that pc before returning it if it does not have that and then if they end up messing it up again or getting infections it will be up to them to fix it, I think you have done your good deed by first giving them a working pc and fixing their mess up once! You have no idea what they are doing with the pc or where they are surfing or how well they understand and utilize security measures. That is up to them to learn and implement. There are lots of great free programs out there, give them a list and tell them to install them and run them. AVAST free antivirus malwarebytes free antimalware superantispyware free edition spywareblaster secunia personal inspector and most importantly all windows updates. You have definitely done a good deed.

I agree with Raven here, I would not be taking a Celeron computer in for repair. That might well cost half the price of a new computer. You don't have a friend, neighbour or relative who might loan you their Windows XP CD? Explain to them that you do not need the license number as your license sticker on the side of the computer case is the one you would enter as you install XP. That sticker number is tied to the motherboard in your computer. (I suspect that if you have XP Home then you would need an XP Home CD) Recovery disks are bought at the time of the computer purchase. Or this is more often just a separate partition on your hard drive and the buyer should create a set of recovery disks. This includes all the 'free' extras the computer maker adds on. The XP CD is just that, a copy of Windows XP with nothing added As a side note you may want to suggest to Dad that he creates a set of recovery disks for his machine in case he runs into problems too at some future point.

dual boot means that you have more than one operating system installed and can choose which to boot to. I had xp and linux for a while, but finally gave up on linux. Dell doesn't supply the windows cd but you are supposed to make one (called the dell os restore cd) using a utility that comes on the computer. It must be easy to overlook that instruction in the material that comes with the computer because several people have posted with that problem. I doubt that you can use the utility to make the cd if you can't boot up, so if it comes to that you may have to contact dell support. Someone may know if it will work to borrow a windows cd and use the file check.