It's not a hard drive problem....it's a new virus that is spreading rapidly.....go here and read about what virus you may have.

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/tre.../msblaster.asp

symantec looks like it has information and a "tool" to get rid of it.

http://securityresponse.symantec.com...ster.worm.html

It's Nation wide Dell sent me the patch and it worked


esupport ([email protected]) has requested that you visit
http://support.dell.com/us/en/kb/org/index.asp

esupport writes:
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http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...2-3de40f69c074

Daze have you fugured out how to fix it? or are we hosed?

1800-www-dell works too.

Dyno,
I haven't been able to fix it yet, but the others above seem to be having luck with that fix. I hope it works!

how can I get to the patch if the thing keeps shutting down? I can look at it here at work but not at home. Forgive me I'm no Puter expert.......

That's what I'm facing, too, when I get home. I'm not looking forward to it.

My best advice is, put the fix on a floppy disc at work and try your best to run it before it shuts down.

You may even have to boot off a recovery disc that should have been provided by your computer manufacturer.

yep.....what daze said.

put it on a disk and bring it home. see if you can get a recovery disk to take you out to a system prompt, and run the fix that is on the disk you brought home.

FYI, if you or anyone ever needs to get a hard drive replaced by Dell, DO NOT MENTION LIGHTNING, take that word out of your vocabulary. Once they hear that it will be treated as an Act-of-God, and not covered. I just got one replaced and had to fight with them real hard because my daughter talked to them first and said she unplugged the computer because she was going out for the night and was afraid there would be a storm. The tech immediately denied her, when I called back another tech accessed the file and sure enough, written down was - lightning damage.

Thanks everyone!!!!