My friend is up and running with her computer! I went over to her house on Sunday afternoon and helped her get the programs I gave her installed. I had to show her how to enlarge her font size so she could see it with out her reading glasses. A friend of her's gave her the computer but didn't clean her information off of it. My friend is going to write down the names of all the programs and I will help her weed them out by deleting or uninstalling programs she doesn't want or need. My friend is 23 years younger than I am and I am glad I could help her.

Cat_ky: I think my friend's computer is about 4 years old but he has never used the JASC program. I removed it (and probably other good but unused software) just to have less programs taking up scan time. I agree that boot time is still long. Many of the programs and tweaks recommended on this forum have been applied to improve performance and progress has been made. Maybe limited RAM is now the issue? My friend is pleased as punch with the improvement. And once the computer boots, he says it "flies". The only thing I've done with the "innards" is open the case and blow out the dust and that took some courage for this amateur. I've watched videos about how to install RAM and it looks relatively simple. MAYBE some day I'll get brave and try that. Meanwhile, I'll continue to read this forum and learn. Fruitjarfla: Thanks for the input. I've already used Black Viper - recommended on this forum - to adjust the programs at start-up. It will be interesting to go to one of the sites you list and actually learn their function - a good project for a rainy day! Again, many thanks to all - June

I have never tried to replace anything on a laptop so I can not help there maybe someone who has can jump in and give some advice. does your player play at all? is the problem only with the burning is what I am getting at. It plays but does not burn or it does not do either task. I found the usb external burner at an office supply store on the clearance rack for quite cheap and it has come in handy to have around especially now that I have a netbook which does not have an onboard cd drive.

Zep, Memtest wouldn't run. It said to use multiple copies of it I think because of the amount of Ram I have 2 GB. Son is not near enough to borrow ram from to test. I am located in middle of FL , son is down in Key West, is a 5-6 hour drive to drive it. The computer is one my son and I built at Christmas last year. It is all different pieces. No brand names. Motherboard is EliteGroup GeForce 6100PM-M2, Sound is Diamond sound card, Video Card is a EVGA Processor is a AMD 2 Dual Core. Network adapter is integrated into the motherboard. I can download the SP2 and burn it to a CD but all the other drivers are on the CD's that I used to install them when this computer was built. I can install the new hard drive this coming weekend and install every thing again and start fresh with everything at a beginning restore point.Then if the BSOD keeps happening I can restore back to the default restore point.