Yep- Trilly on down to the local lawn tractor dealer, and plunk down a large handfull of cash for a new machine. Yer old one is TOAST!

from the archives: Repost of Slammer's Rules... 1. Carefully evaluate the size mower you need and buy at least one size larger. 2. NEVER buy a mower from ANYPLACE that will not let you test drive it or at least a similar model. Ergonomics are just as important as performance and capability. (Vitally important!) 3. DO NOT base your purchase on price or brand name alone! Do proper research and find all of the available models that fit your criteria and haggle, save, or trade to get the right equipment for the job. Do not compromise! If you follow these three tips you will end up a happy camper with just the right unit for the job. If you disregard this advice your gonna end up with One or the other of the following problems: A. Buyers remorse. Stuck with a piece of junk or simply a unit inadequate for the task at hand. Or.. B. A teed off spouse when you start shopping for another tractor just 3 - 6 months down the road because you didn't buy the right unit in the first place. Now go forth and shop and try and have fun!

Thanks everyone. Lots of useful methods. Mikie - it's good to know about moving entire folders (I don't have my video's in folders - yet - but am just discovering how useful that would be for shows I've recorded for a few seasons - having them altogether). I'd like to double check and ask what "a cmd window" is - and how I'd get there. Again - I have Windows XP (SP3). Sorry to say, Mikie, but I also need more explanation for what "make a shortcut to the destination , within the folder the files are in... then select a bunch of what I want to move, cut&paste onto the shortcut" means. I know someday I'll understand all of this, but I don't know how to make a shortcut to the destination. And once I cut and paste onto the shortcut, what do I do with it? Absolutely there are some big files - so I'm glad to told me to break it up into smaller chunks. I have so far. Thank you. Lynn.

More memory is good but at some point there is a diminishing return on the investment and that point is a function of what you are doing with your computer. Things like first person shooter games, video editing, photo editing (of very large files) all benefit from lots of memory. Writing an email to Aunt Betty doesn't require very much memory at all because the computer can process information far faster than you can type. Same thing for the Internet, your computer can render pages faster than your connection can supply the information. So if you have a slow internet connection, you're not likely to experience much, if any improvement. With that said, 4 gigs is probably a pretty good number. If you really want a WOW factor, get a solid state drive and use that for your O/S and critical applications. To try and answer some of your questions: - Windows doesn't care about the physical drive or any logical partitions. It does make good sense to install Windows 7 on the newer, faster drive. You'll get the best performance that way. When it comes time to get rid of XP, everything will be on one drive and that, if nothing else, should help you keep things mentally organized. - My understanding is that you have two physical drives, one with a functioning version of XP and the other blank. If that is not correct, say so NOW. - When you go to install Windows 7, it will recognize that there is another operating system (Windows XP) already installed. Windows 7 won't do anything to XP other than to set up the dual boot. Essentially it's computer language that says, "XP is there, Windows 7 is here, which one do you want to use?" - Logical partitions to a drive a largely a function of personal preference. Understand that it is more difficult (but not impossible) to non-destructively repartition a drive after you put data on it. If you, for example, have a partition for music, another for videos, and a third for pictures and find down the road that you have a lot more videos than music, it becomes more difficult to rearrange things. My suggestion is a single, large partition and use folders to organize your data.