hello, the machine is only 3 years old,yes i did destroy all the data on it after i formatted.i still have the larger drive but it won't read it. last night a neighbor gave me a windows 2000 disc and i formatted the drive again and it worked;it saw the full capacity of the drive and is ready to use, however when i try to bring the second drive with 225 + gigs of data on it it will not see it no matter how i switch things around bios won't read it, so i took it out, the drive i have working is set to master and is the only drive in the pc but bios says it is a secondary slave drive but it is on the primary ide channel and set to master!!everything in bios is set to auto detect drives,but as soon as i connect the other drive as a slave drive and reboot, the computer freezes and gets stuck on the post screen and hangs.funny thing is when i take that drive and put it in the hard drive enclosure that converts regular drives to use with usb and plug it into the computer i am on right now and reboot, windows comes up and says : found new hardware,mass storage usb device,your hardware is installed and ready to use,it even gives me a new drive letter,shows the drive as a western digital drive but... when i click on the drive letter it says please insert a disk into drive j....hmmm

Thanks, the usual (expected, but thanks) excellent help from all. The Gateway load comes with a backup icon on the "desktop", but I'll also look at the suggestions in this thread. Is one DVD enough to create the backup/recovery disks? I recall needing several for W7, done a few years back, and I did use the recovery disk a couple of times. I believe Norton is blocking me installing Thunderbird, I gave up thinking when the good friends tell me how to get the control panel I'll uninstall Norton and then try to install Thunderbird. On that subject, can I port my Bookmarks (Firefox) and Folders (Thunderbird) from my W7 to W8 by Installing first on W8, then coping folders from the W7 to overwrite in W8? My Toshiba W7 64 Bit has a 1.6 GHz processor, I think the new Gateway has a 1.4 GHz, I can check but not on that machine at the moment. But the Gateway is the next gen, i.e., a so called dual-core. That may mean it is more like my old processor running at 2.8 GHz... then too W8 may be an improvement. Downloading I continue to be amazed at the size of programs, Mozilla and Avira all over 100 megabytes. Of course, I come from the days when a hard drive of 10 megabytes was good.

Okay, using the Firefox "troubleshooter" I went to plug ins and set and changed "shock waver" from always on to ask. All seems much better - so far. Right now the CPU Utilization is so low the processor speed, a slow 1.4 Ghz is backing down to slower speeds to save power, this is a Laptop and does what it can to extend battery life even if the A/C is attached, or so it seems. I tried to view a video on Youtube and it asked me to enable Shock Wave, I did and the video play normally and the CUP utilization was still well below the old 90% level. This my be the culprit - I wonder what IE does about Shock Wave, I'll try to find out later. Another mystery: HOW DO I BOOT IN SAFE MODE in W8? Yes I know I'm shouting but that's how I feel about Microsoft at the moment, maybe a Mac is in my future, when I'm "rich and famous".

Follow the directions below we can see what is running: Click Here to download HJTInstall.exe Download the Installer on that page Version 2.02 right hand side click Installer.. Save HJTInstall.exe to your desktop. Doubleclick on the HJTInstall.exe icon on your desktop. By default it will install to C:\Program Files\Trend Micro\HijackThis . Click on Install. It will create a HijackThis icon on the desktop. Click on the Do a system scan and save a logfile button. It will scan and the log should open in notepad. Click on "Edit > Select All" then click on "Edit > Copy" and Paste the entire contents of the log (no attachments) into your next post. DO NOT use the AnalyzeThis button, its findings are dangerous if misinterpreted. DO NOT have Hijackthis fix anything yet. Most of what HJT lists will be harmless or even required by your Operating System. Then do this below: Double click the hijackthis Icon on the Desktop, Scroll down to "Open the Misc Tools section" Click it at the bottom under System tools click "Open Uninstall Manager" over to the right click "Save List" Save it to your Desktop so you may find it, copy and paste it in your next reply..