TOTAL DISASTER HAS STRUCK

Are they kidding???? Who can cope with this amount of hard drive?

Firstly, thanks to all for your good wishes - both by comment and email. Very comforting and very much appreciated.

NOW...the state of play:

I got the computer back yesterday (the nice IT man at our local internet cafe had a go) and I am sorry to say that, although he got it working again, it is not the machine it was. NO complaints at all regarding his work - it turns out the 'new' hard drive I was sent two years ago (when the hard drive was destroyed by a trojan) isn't actually the hard drive I was told it was.

My Packard Bell machine originally had over 200 gb hard drive, 2 gb memory (which I have beefed up to 3gb although it's not showing) but the hard drive they sent me was reconditioned - and having rebooted using Packard Bell's own discs several times, which has stripped out the formatting, I have found:

• It's a Windows 98 (my computer is Windows XP Home) but I was told I was getting a new hard drive
• Suddenly an A drive has appeared for a floppy disc (there isn't a floppy disc drawer on the machine!)
• I have only 29mb hard drive, of which only 13mb is usuable!

Only the barest essentials - I had only just started to reload programmes.

I can hardly load anything, as you can see - you wouldn't believe what I had on there before... So what chance do I have working with my blog backgrounds etc? Huh?

Although my extended 5-year warranty (nearly £200) has run out, in the interest of public relations, the kind lady at Curries has asked me to bring the machine in for them to check it out.

I may swing it on the fact it was under guarantee when this hard drive was sent, so they may decide to do something for me - but I'm not holding my breath. I'm totally devastated, and who knows when I'll get the machine back - so you won't see any posts unless I do it from the internet cafe (which means no pix, sorry).

And if they won't do anything for me out of kindness, I wonder what anyone CAN do - and how much it's going to cost! I think it's going to have to be a case of save hard for a new one. Sob!