Ellie if you only have anti virus you are at risk. I would suggest you get Malwarebytes and SUPERantispyware, both of which are free. These require you to manually update and run scans but they only need doing every one to 3 weeks depending on how conscientious/nervous you are. I never leave my external hard drive connected to the computer. This is both for safety and economy. Connected it is open to attack and also runs all the time. If you have a factory built computer your power supply might be taxed to a degree unless your external drive is self powered. Most today are not self powered I believe. You wrote: If I can't bring my computer up ( that is called a crash or a blue screen) I install my recovery discs first. The CD drive works even if the computer has crashed. There is no real answer to this untill the catastrophic event occurs. You might get clues for days before the event to warn you. There would also be valuable clues in the event of a blue screen of death from the error message displayed. (BSOD) I assume you mean Best Buy replaced a defective hard drive with a new one? What was written on the labels of the disks from BB? That would be a clue as to what they are for. As I noted before recovery disks allow you to take your computer back to the new state it was in when purchased, a backup created on your external drive will return the computer to the state at the time of that backup. Any work saved in between would be lost. You can store your data on the computer itself and back it up to the external drive for protection. Always a good plan to have data you do not wish to lose saved in 2 locations Outlook is generally a part of Microsoft Office although I understand it can be bought as a stand alone program - quite expensive too. One would presume Cobian Backup came with your Go_Flex drive. It is good that you ask these questions but be sure to allow yourself to enjoy the benefit these things can bring you. A computer is only as good as the person sat in front of the keyboard. Urlee and Cat_ky I have no issues with anyone owning more than one computer, I have 6 and all working yet I live alone. But to purchase another computer "just in case" seems rather more than odd to me and a complete waste of money for an item that keeps becoming out of date with alarming regularity. Don expressed it very wisely I think.

well if we look at your actual problem it may be that all you need to do is uninstall your copy you currently have on there now and then do a reinstall from your discs which you have. It could be that something simply got corrupted and a fresh install will fix it right back to how it should be. That would be my first try before buying something else. I use Open Office on all my linux comuters and have Office Professional (not 2007!) on my xp computers, I have had no problems between the 2, you do have the options with Open Office as to which type of file format you want to save in. I would first definitely try to find out just what the problem is with what is on there now before going on. Is it only emailed files is it only to one email is it to all files is it to all emails etc are files not emailed ok?

bg - I followed your instructions, but ran into a problem at: "On the tools tab, select Check Now" I don't see that option anywhere. Should I have been in safe mode? Nevertheless - I think I may have figured something out. Let's see if I can explain this. I only have one floppy with Word documents on it. Luckily I have copies on my C drive. I went back to the beginning and started over. First I went into Word, inserted that floppy and tried to access the documents I know I have saved there. Got the Access Denied message as stated in my original post. Next I went into My Computer with that disk still in the drive, clicked on A: and got a message that the disk was not formatted. What? It was at one point since I have lots of documents saved on it. I also label my floppies, so I know I didn't have the wrong one. Went back into Word, inserted a different floppy, opened a document on my C drive and tried saving it to the new floppy. IT WORKED!! I could save it and then I could open it. Didn't get the Access Denied message at all. So I guess it was a floppy disk problem. I still don't know why I got that: You do not have access to the folder 'A:\'. See you system administrator for access to this folder. message if the disk was bad.

Thanks anyway...I knew I clicked on something and it was "my computer"...I'm ok.