depending on how the drive has failed using the freeze method does work in some cases. However you need to be very fast and be ready to copy the data off to an external drive or flash drive it will now last long when it starts to thaw which is instantly. You need to put it in a zip lock bag in the freezer and leave it normally over night to get a good solid freeze. Then if you have those blue ice frozen things as soon as you take the HD out of the freezer keep that blue ice on it to keep it cold (some people actually use dry ice). Some people keep the HD out of the pc so they can keep it iced and last longer, if you have room to do that I would. try googling freeze a hard drive this is one of the many results Data Recovery From a Failed Hard Drive - Freezing Method: Freeze a clicking hard drive to recover data

Now even I had to look up an acronym - SIL. ;-) Ok, so you have MS Works XLR & WPS files. The problems you are having - or going to have - is that Works is old, and the Office XP Pro your SIL gave you is also old, being actually Office 2002, version 10 of Office. If you don't have too many files, I think your best bet is to try an online file converter. Zamzar claims to be able to open and convert Works files. http://www.zamzar.com/ Save : XLR (spreadsheet) files to xlsx WPS (word) files to docx If you don't want to buy a new version of MS Office, try installing LibreOffice - the newer version of OpenOffice - and it will open xlsx and docx files [ If you want to stick with your SIL's MS Office XP Pro, then convert those files to xls & doc files, respectively. That version of Office is very old though. ] There are other ways of handling this, but probably if you you're going to try anything else, your best bet would be buy MS Works off Ebay or Amazon for $10 or so, open and convert all the files. Btw, you can't even open a .doc file in Office XP Pro ?? That's not a good sign - probably a sign of corruption. Btw #2 - When you say you can't open files, I take it they are on your current hard drive, and not within some compressed backup folder. That is, not within a zip file or the like. Re your backup cds : Can you load one of them, then rummage around in their files and tell us what you find ? (as in, names of files and extensions ?) Most likely they are proprietary formats, but if we know what they are, we could perhaps tell you how to retrieve them. Last, anyway you can get the hard drive back from the repair service ? Probably not, but it would be a second source of backup files. Let us know how it all works out.

More memory is good but at some point there is a diminishing return on the investment and that point is a function of what you are doing with your computer. Things like first person shooter games, video editing, photo editing (of very large files) all benefit from lots of memory. Writing an email to Aunt Betty doesn't require very much memory at all because the computer can process information far faster than you can type. Same thing for the Internet, your computer can render pages faster than your connection can supply the information. So if you have a slow internet connection, you're not likely to experience much, if any improvement. With that said, 4 gigs is probably a pretty good number. If you really want a WOW factor, get a solid state drive and use that for your O/S and critical applications. To try and answer some of your questions: - Windows doesn't care about the physical drive or any logical partitions. It does make good sense to install Windows 7 on the newer, faster drive. You'll get the best performance that way. When it comes time to get rid of XP, everything will be on one drive and that, if nothing else, should help you keep things mentally organized. - My understanding is that you have two physical drives, one with a functioning version of XP and the other blank. If that is not correct, say so NOW. - When you go to install Windows 7, it will recognize that there is another operating system (Windows XP) already installed. Windows 7 won't do anything to XP other than to set up the dual boot. Essentially it's computer language that says, "XP is there, Windows 7 is here, which one do you want to use?" - Logical partitions to a drive a largely a function of personal preference. Understand that it is more difficult (but not impossible) to non-destructively repartition a drive after you put data on it. If you, for example, have a partition for music, another for videos, and a third for pictures and find down the road that you have a lot more videos than music, it becomes more difficult to rearrange things. My suggestion is a single, large partition and use folders to organize your data.

There's a good chance your neighbor doesn't know what problem he has/had. Grubs are easy to find. Dig up 1 square foot of turf. If you can count fewer than a dozen grubs, you don't have a problem. If you have an uncountable mass of grubs, then you have a problem. A lot of people don't know what crabgrass looks like and believe that the weed they have is crabgrass. The problem is trying to treat a weed that is not crabgrass often does not work. Crabgrass is a summer annual plant that will get a good start in mid to late spring IF THE SOIL STAYS WET FOR A FEW DAYS IN A ROW. Crabgrass seed needs full sunlight and continued moisture over several days. If you maintain tall turf, say 3+ inches high, that will go a long way to preventing crabgrass from ever getting started. But if the grass thins out from disease or grubs, then crabgrass can break in the following spring. But it also needs continual moisture. This is one reason why seeding northern grasses in the spring is a bad idea, because the same treatment used for germinating new grass seed is ideal for germinating crabgrass seed. And the crabgrass will germinate faster than any of the cool season grass seeds giving you the impression that you're a lawn genius. Many people will pull back on watering just before the real grass seed germinates. What they end up with is a full crabgrass lawn by July. Crabgrass will completely die after the first frost of autumn. With this in mind, I'm going to suggest you do not water twice a week during spring and only do that when the temps are real close to 100 degrees F. Once a week with temps in the 90s should be fine as long as you water 1 full inch, all at one time. You can treat your hard soil by spraying it with baby shampoo at a rate of 3 ounces per 1,000 square feet. Or you could do 3 ounces per 100 square feet. It's not going to hurt anything if you use too much. Follow that up with 1/2 to 1 inch of irrigation or rain to take the shampoo deep into the soil. If water runs off rather than soaking in, stop watering immediately and wait 15 to 30 minutes for the water to soak in. Then resume until you get the 1/2 to 1 inch. You can measure the water with a tuna can or cat food can. The shampoo works by setting up the perfect environment underground for holding moisture and keeping it cool. The microbes living in the soil will soften it for you. Give it 3 weeks to see the improvement. If you have bare spots now, rather than seeding in the spring, it would be better if you could cover it with sod. The sod will help keep the crabgrass seed from germinating if it is already there.