Thanks everyone. Mikie - I will try that link soon. I sort of agree that if everything's fine, don't go borrowing trouble. But my laptop isn't quite fine - and I don't know what's wrong with it. The past month it's been weird. When I unplug it (to move it to another room), it just shuts down. The battery was staying at 87% all day yesterday - while plugged in. Then it sometimes takes many, many minutes to boot up after it's suddenly shut down because it was unplugged. Sometimes I have to reboot a few times til it functions properly. I updated and ran Avast, superantispyware,malwarebyte and spywareblaster. All were fine - so I don't think I'm infected. I sometimes keep a lot of tabs open at once(I'm embarassed to say how many - but since it's relevant - perhaps 2-3 dozen). I'm comparison shopping and keeping open the tabs for whatever I'm currently researching or shopping for. I know this taxes the resources. When I shut the computer down, I run ccleaner to get all that stuff cleared up. Lately it's done something else weird. Sometimes when I click to open something up in a new tab (Firefox - which was like version 5 - but they recently sprung 9 on my which I never authorized - Windows XP). So I click open a new tab. And the tabs just keep scrolling across the top. As I try to click on a particular tab, the tabs keep scrolling to the left. This happens even if only a dozen tabs are open. And this doesn't happen every time but has become frequent. I have to let it scroll for 5-20 seconds before the tabs stay still - and I can click on one. I have no idea what's going on. At first I thought I had too many tabs open - and overtaxed my system. But since it's happened with closer to 10-12 tabs (and no other programs open), I'm not sure that's the problem. Is it Firefox? My laptop? driver? Thanks. Lynn. PS damccoy - they wouldn't let me print out the page. It kept disappearing - bc. of course they want me to spend money for their program to update - they don't want to hand me the list to do it on my own.

From what you've described, my reactions are: The program you're using (Secunia) is unnecessary. I wouldn't spend another second using it or opening it. Programs update themselves. Driver Restorer sounds like a come on, I'd delete it and pay no further attention to it. If a driver needs updating, the periodic update sessions from MS will handle it. If your PC is working adequately with its hardware, the topic of drivers can be ignored. Java has nothing to do with the display's general performance. Maybe some part of the screen or what controls it is failing? Is your PC going into some kind of a sleep cycle, does the screen brighten if you touch a key? Maybe you should take the PC to a repair shop or replace it if it's old?

What's the model # of the Laptop? Lenovo xxxxxx What's the name of the display adapter? As listed in device manager? We might be able to get from the ATI site since it appears to be an ATI adapter. Have you visited Lenovo site to look for driver? To enter device Manager in XP open the Run box copy this text in bold devmgmt.msc paste it into the run box and click ok. Once in there look under Display adapters and give us the entire name listed. While you're in there right click on it now choose uninstall. Reboot the computer. Windows will reinstall the driver for you. Sometimes this will resolve an issue or 2 but it may not.

As it happens, things have changed. The technician Dell sent came with the replacement hard drive (with pre-installed XP and drivers). He installed it - booted - and the same hard drive warning occurred. Turns out it was my second internal hard drive (that I use for data) that was going bad. It was a good thing I already had the 2TB replacement. So he put the 2TB drive in - returned my original hard drive - and all functioned well - no hard drive error messages. Now I do have work ahead of me - but this changes the nature of it. Much better scenario - but still requires thinking through. There are probably just a few video files on the second internal hard drive that I don't have copies of. I think they're still accessible - so I will either get a docking station - or better yet an enclosure (since I will need one anyway - as I'll describe later) to put it in - and see if I can transfer those video files to my new 2TB internal drive. I think it makes sense to test that drive to see what's wrong with it - if it's repairable by Windows XP (I think if I run chkdsk there are possibilities to repair some damage?). Should I do this? Or are there other methods to safely test out the health of my hard drive? It is also a Western Digital. The timing of the hard drive failure is now making more sense. I had spent the previous weekend backing up lots of data files onto this second internal 1.5 TB hard drive. I think some of those transferred Tivo files might be problematic. (I say that for 2 reasons - when I've tried to defrag the hard drive, I recall a few files that couldn't be defragged - and while it was hard to see the path, I think they were the Tivo videos. Also, there were a few Tivo videos that failed to work properly when I tried to run VideoRedo to remove commercials. Some just seemed to be bad files - of course, I don't recall which those ones were - but it makes me wonder if it's the sources of the problem on that second hard drive.) Next step is call Dell - I bought that second hard drive from them 1 1/2 yrs ago. It has a 3 yr warranty. I'm not sure if the warranty will be honored by Dell or Western Digital (the brand of drive). So I figure I'll be getting a replacement 1.5 TB hard drive - which I can either install internally - use it as program drive or data drive. I can use the original 500GB drive externally. Or maybe I should keep it the way it is now. Original 500GB internal hard drive, second 2 TB internal hard drive - and put the replacement 1.5 TB hard drive in an enclosure and use for back-ups. One reason I'd like to use the 2TB drive as a program/boot drive (or master drive - I'm not sure of the language) is bc. it's supposed to be a faster drive - Western Digital Black Caviar 2TB drive - 7200rpm and 64MB Cache that was a bit pricier, but I thought it was worth it for quality and speed. It's this one: http://www.amazon.co...ref=oss_product (although I paid less than the price listed online) I'm new enough at all this that I don't understand everything about hard drive speed. I think that a larger drive can potentially slow things down a bit as it has to work to see date over a larger area/amount of data - but that the 7200rpm and 64MB cache will offer more speed - and the reviews suggest this thing is fast. I'd love any guidance in weighing these factors as I decide which to make the primary drive. I also want to clarify what to do with this drive. I don't know how to partition. And if I did, how large a partition should I create on this 2TB drive - if it were to hold the operating systems and programs? I don't know how much room that takes - and how to be sure to take the appropriate sections of my original drive to place into this partition. I can figure out what size each portion of my original hard drive is? I just don't know which folders go into the partition for programs/software? I don't want to leave any out - and I'm concerned I will miss some folders bc. I do not recognize what they are. If I partition the drive, I gather I don't clone it - but do it in sections. I also don't know if I should format it first. Or partition first. Disk management is fairly new to me although I did format a couple of drives. I didn't get into partitions and copying from one drive to another. Does it make sense to use this 2TB drive (which I bought for it's speed and good functioning) as the main drive? If so, I don't know the order of operations? Clone my original drive to this drive? Format and partition first (in which case I'll need to know how to get the proper system files vs. data files into the right partitions). I think I know that if I make this 2TB the master, I have to either switch the cables - but since I think they won't stretch to the second hard drive bay, I'll probably have to swap them. I am so relieved not to have lost my original drive. Although it consumed the better part of last weekend, I did learn plenty - and feel more confident cutting my "recovery" teeth on recovering data from the bad second drive which only has some video at stake. Just as a reminder my original drive has about 350GB data. Thanks everyone. Lynn. PS - I did learn a couple of important things from this technician. First, he updated the bios in my computer (which was several versions old). And he told me where to go to update the bios on my daughter's computer. That was useful. It's a question I've had for a while when I see people on this forum ask whether someone has updated their bios.