This morning I fired up my computer as usual and the McAfee pop up appeared and told me there was an update I needed. So what did I do? Clicked on it. Downloaded it. Installed it. All of a sudden, all my desktop icons vanished. Okay..no problem...I just figured I needed to re boot. I restarted my computer and there was a DOS screen telling me that a config\sys file was corrupted and I needed the set up disk to "attempt" to repair. After going through every box and file in the house, I found it. Nothing worked. Everything I tried, and believe me, I tried everything...in every combination possible, all I could ever get to was this same DOS screen, telling me my config\system file was corrupted or missing. I finally called Dell support. After talking with them for quite a while and going through the gambit they decided that there was nothing I could do but let them take me back to the original factory settings...and we did. (worked pretty fast at that point though, they used something I have on my system called PC Restore and they did it on line.) Well now, the computer is back up and running, but I've lost everything. Some things I have on my work computer, and some of my data base is loaded onto my drip email at Point2Agent, but all my records, marketing materials, Outlook contacts, Calendar, Tasks, etc. are gone. I'm going to be spending a lot of time reconstructing this. Yes...I know...it's my own fault. I have a back up cd here that I kept meaning to do a back up. Every time I attempted it, I would get confused on what files or what programs I was supposed to back up, and how to exactly do it. So I'd get frustrated and figure I'd do it another day with someone a little more savvy to help me. That day didn't come and now I'm toast. So the saying that "it's not IF your computer will crash, but really a matter of WHEN" is very true. I really made a big mistake not heeding that. After I went through this with Dell, I started thinking that I may have panicked and maybe there was some way that before they wiped it clean I could have found someone or some place that could have gotten into my hard drive and saved some of the data. Too little thinking too late though. So yes, I realize losing all my data is due to my own stupidity. But anyone out there that keeps putting it off - Please back up your data. Tonight!