Finally back with an update...

First of all, I am so grateful for all your help, and hope that you know that!

I did go look for floppies - and the one store I had time to visit only had ones
formatted for a Mac - so came home and found some empty ones here - exactly
six. I then put one in the floppy drive and discovered the option that said "create a recovery disc" - so I did that. I have no idea what that did. I know absolutely nothing about MS-DOS - so I"m not sure what to do with that disc if I did put it in my machine if it refuses to boot up.

I am running Windows XP Home Edition with service pack 2 - sorry if I omitted that with my original question. So it looks like - from reading the last two posts, that the automated recovery option is not available to me - so I will have to go the other route that b1caez01 was talking about. However, I'll still have to go get more floppies - as now I only have 5.

Meanwhile - I did set up the machine to do a 'disc check' and then shut down the machine and it did come back up and do the check - again taking it a full five hours to do so - is that normal? But at the end of that, the machine booted up normally and has been ok since - even when I shut it down last night because of excessive thunderstorms in our area. It does take forever to boot up - and the first time, it came up with that "check sum" error - and I have to click F1 to continue, and the date is always off - saying either January of 2001 or 2002. The second time I had to re-boot in order to get it connected to the cable modem, I did not get the "check-sum" error - and things seem ok. I say 'seems' because I don't trust that it is.

Now I will go and do the clean-up thing that b1caez01 mentioned, and see what that turns up. Hoping so much to put all these errors behind me... and being ever so much more diligent with backups...

Gratefully,
Trish