Could it be fixed?

Hey Martin,
I did go to the Add/Remove programs and checked that box (which I had never noticed before - thank you for that tip) and scrolled down to the updates - and the two that were the start of all this were not there.
So....thinking that if they weren't there, then there was no reason to move on to plan B - so I just re-booted the machine - and it re-booted like it had up to last Tuesday.....do you suppose that 5+ hours doing the scan disk actually repaired whatever was causing it to freak out? That was the longest it has ever taken to do that.
At any rate - the machine appears to be working just fine now. Course, I said that last week too - but at least I know it has re-booted without incident.

Thank you so much Martin, for taking all the time you did to try and troubleshoot the problem I was having. I truly appreciate it - and hope that some day I'll have learned enough to be able to give back.

Trish