I think I've seen some "stuff" at the lumber yards...that you dip your pliers handles in to give them that rubbery grip. Maybe you could pour it into a can and dip the ladder legs in it. Anything that you would slip over the ends will catch and hold water when it rains causing the legs to rot. Unless maybe you use silicon glue around the top to make it waterproof. patti

What a coincidence, Cameron. My wife was just telling me two minutes ago that a friend of ours, who runs her own very small business, had a hard drive die, and had no backups of anything at all. You have to feel sorry for people in that situation, yet wonder how they didn't get the word about backing up. As the geeks like to say, "It's not if your HD dies, it's when." Other possibilities that might work for backing up are external hard drives, online (I don't think any are free) backup sites, or even a second computer. I have a laptop on which I have backed up files from my desktop. Chances are they won't both die at the same time. ThinMan

Linda I can't help you with your problem - but I use Microsoft Digital Image Suite 2006 Anniversary Edition. It is the latest and last version of the Picture It software. It will have lots more bells and whistles than just Picture It, but the heart of the program is the same. It is a powerful photo editor, but easy to use. It can make cards, caledar pages, scrapbook pages, etc and do some awesome photo editing. Microsoft has decided to discontinue its photo editing software - but you can still find it on eBay and Amazon. Be sure to get the Anniversary Edition, as it will be Vista compatable if you ever upgrade your computer. There are some great tutorials online for this software if you decide to get it. One site actually starts with the Picture It software in its tutorials. Back to your problem. If you "Google" your error word for word, sometimes you can find a solution. Try posting the exact error message here - or even better, a screen shot of the message. Good luck! I have added a link to a page that is all about Picture It! and its later versions Digital Image Pro and Digital Image Suite Here is a link that might be useful: Proud To Use Picture It! by Mary's Graphics

I think someone mentioned that what you posted, the registry change wasn't necessarily bad but could be from a program being removed. I wonder if there is a way to find out if you were actually infected with something? This is why I suggested the Panda scan because it would have told you. btw, make sure you do windows updates. I personally would get rid of Mcafee. I know you paid for it but it's a resource hog. For backups I have multiple hard drives, they are cheap. I have an external enclosure that holds 2 drives. I have a computer running windows XP, installed the Maxtor Maxblast program and use that to back up to the larger drives. As far as I know, they don't have a program (Maxtor) like this for Vista but I could be wrong. What it will do is back it up as files verses a file that you have to unpack. If you back up your C drive, you will see every folder on the C drive in your backup.