I know exactly how you feel. I started using confusers back in the day when there was not automatic and frequent backing up of items you were working on that were part of the program, (you know, the technological Stone age of the 1980s). At the time I worked in an underground military facility where there were massive backup generators. Every month the generators would be tested by shutting down the main power and switching to generator driven power. Naturally none of the facility engineers bothered to inform the Ops Center when they were going to do this. Trust me, there is no feeling worse than seeing lights suddenly flicker and the document you have been working on suddenly disappear from the known universe.

Oye was never my first word of choice.

You have my sympathies.

Nancy Cole

If it's JUST a blue screen, you've got about a 98% chance than your information is still there.

You need an external backup of some sort, and some way to boot the machine. The simplest of those are external hard drive or flash drive, and a Linux boot CD (Bart PE can work too, but Knoppix is probably simpler to get and use) Kubuntu or Ubuntu live CD will do it as well.

Just boot, use the file manager to browse to the documents, and start copying to the external.

... if your data weren't still stored safely on the HD. If you can run an operating system from the the CD Rom then you shouldn't have a problem. I don't suppose that, unlike me, you have a floppy drive installed because, if you had, you'd be able to run DOS and access the data fairly easily. One of our machines even has a 51/4" FDD :) I draw the line at 7" drives, cassette or, heaven forbid, punched tape.

Another way would be to remove the HD and install it in a working machine and read it that way. I don't care what you do, just get those chapters posted! ;)

Robi