The Amazing Disappearing Files

[Doubleshadow]

I so dislike playing the damsel in distress, but I am at an impase. There have been quite a few files missing from my computer since I had XP relaoded after a particularly nasty hit from the blaster virus that left the guys who wiped my hard drive in awe (networks are mixed blessings). Now some files are missing. I cannot download foreign language dictionaries to run the spell spellchecker in Spanish for example, because that file is missing. I cannot defrag my hard drive because that file is missing as well. I know there are more but I cannot think of them off the top of my head. Is this series of disappearences due to neglect on the part of the computer repair guys (they also forgot my DVD decoder), and if it is, is there anyway I can fix this seeing as my initial copy of Windows XP is over an hour away at least and its exact location is unknown to me and therefore not readily accessible?

[Puritan]

Everyone has problems, just because you're female doesn't make you a damsel in distress. I would suggest you reload the programs you are having problems with (i.e. Office or whatever you're using), but the inability to defrag your hard drive suggests that your Windows installation is corrupted in some ways. Someone else may be able to give you better advice, but I would suggest re-installing. As a temporary fix, if you would like you could PM me the names of the disk defrag files and I would be happy to send them to you if they aren't huge. However, in the long run it would be a good idea to just reinstall Windows.

[^Kaji]

The repair option would work as well. That does require the windows cd though. Then again, I was having some annoying problems and fixed them all with windows update. It does replace a lot of the system files in the course of updating. If you're still running SP1 I would suggest upgrading to SP2 off the winupdate site, it will probably fix most of it. The dvd decoder is going to be seperate though, you'll have to reinstall that on your own.