Hi Pete,

Thanks for you response - you're right, it is unlikely that it's related to Limewire - just an unfortunate coincidence.

I think I've been able to piece together what happened, if anyone else with similar problems could learn from it:

My RAM went, causing all sorts of random problems. Reinstalling Windows 98 was a BAD thing to do without knowing what the problem was - my friend gave me a free hard drive to make it up to me. That just messed up the file system on my computer.

However, the new drive (with a fresh OS, WIn 98 again) hung when booting. I used msconfig (from safe mode) to finally figure out that it was the video driver. I installed a new driver, and then it booted, so I was able to copy most of my applications to the new drive (I had already backed up my crucial files, but not my apps)

I originally had the old drive as the master and the new drive as the slave, but then this week the old drive failed! So now I have to use the new drive - reinstalling all the drivers for my ethernet card, video card, sound card, etc. and configuring it.

A question: Is it just a concidence that my RAM and my HDD would go in the same month? (The HDD is from '97 and the RAM is from 2000) Or is there something going on that could damage my other hardware?

Another question: Just for my education's sake, _could_ a virus damage hardware? (theoretically speaking) Could spyware damage hardware?



P.S. Running Norton Anti-virus on my old drive showed no viruses, so I KNOW now that that wasn't the cause... I'm pretty careful about what I open/download.

Thanks, and happy computing!

Julie