Jane do have have your system set to go into 'System standby' after a given number of minutes? For some this seems to be an issue. Personally I only set my monitor and hard drive to turn off after X minutes. You can check by right clicking on the desktop, click the screensaver tab, click Power and view the new window. Also click the Hibernate button and see if you are set to hibernate, another feature I have never used. No ideas on the fingerprint reader but there is an MS link below. However when I had to log in each time I found it annoying. So I Clicked Start/Run and typed in control userpassowrds2 and hit OK. I then removed the check mark requiring a user to log in. In your case this might depend on whether you have 4 separate accounts or you all simply use the computer. Here is a link that might be useful: How to remove fingerprint reader

I work as a an electrician/teledata installer and can offer a few tips. Consider a central location to route all your cables in the entire house and use a residental media hub like the one Leviton sells it allows you to add various components based on your needs . Buy having all your cables and components in one location it allows for a convenient place to do all your switching, cross-connects and networking in one place, plus the ability to adjust for future technologies. You could add multiplexers for security, convert a future fiber optic internet connection into an Ethernet swich that coverts signal for distribution devices as needed and many others options. Cat 5e/6 cables offer a lot of flexibility, baluns are the peices that can be soldered or terminated on the ends of an cat5e/6 cable allowing it to adapt to hdmi and a wide array of other connection types. Other users who offered the advice on raceways are correct smerf tube is a good way to go be sure to get a pull string or something similar (I use 16 awg thhn electrical wire) installed before closing the walls. Best of luck. Here's link to leviton home media cabinets. Here is a link that might be useful: Inside Leviton Structured Media Enclosures

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.

@ace_tx From what I've read a lot of people are suggesting what you said, so I'm thinking that would be a good idea.... can you just help me understand it a bit more? Would I run all four of those wires to where the tv would be in the room? or only 1 rg6 quad coax and 1 6pr cat5e/6 lines to where the tv and they other 2 would be at a different location in the room? (Then of course all those wires would run to the central location, right, and plug into what?, I'm not sure - guess I can figure that out later) Are there any other cables I should have behind my TV in the main viewing area (assuming my dvd player and stuff are in a separate cabinet)? THANKS!