RaisedFromTheDead wrote:Never trust your files on a hard drive. Use a USB or DVD burner.

If its important always have it in at least 2 places.  Everything can break or get corrupt but generally only 1 thing at a time.

I have had USB keys fry themselves when plugged in, DVDs that go bad, hard drives that crash, etc.  None of it is 100% safe.  Our iPod harddrive crashed 1 year and 16 days after it was purchased (warranty was only 1 year) so its now a $300 paper weight.

Mars wrote:
If its important always have it in at least 2 places.  Everything can break or get corrupt but generally only 1 thing at a time.

I have had USB keys fry themselves when plugged in, DVDs that go bad, hard drives that crash, etc.  None of it is 100% safe.  Our iPod harddrive crashed 1 year and 16 days after it was purchased (warranty was only 1 year) so its now a $300 paper weight.

Yes, I mean in addition to HDD. I actually keep important data in 3 places: server, external HD, and thumb drive.

Actually there turned out to be a simple solution.  I simply did a system restore and then validated Vista on the Microsoft website without a problem.  That saved me a lot of time.

misterspock wrote:
After you did the restore and validation, have you downloaded and installed any critical updates through Microsoft Update? I'm wondering if something on there triggered this the first time around. Originally I was thinking it could have been a virus/malware in Bill's case. I've seen some nasty stuff in the past couple years and unfortunately the easiest way through is really a repartition/reformat and reinstall.

Not yet.  If the problem happens after an update then I'll do another system restore and just turn off updating as long as I have that computer.

deimos3428 wrote:A recent Windows Update caused my computer to claim it wasn't an authentic version, until I rebooted.  Then it finished doing whatever voodoo it was doing.

There's an "authentication" (Windows Genuine Advantage) download/update from time to time (anti-piracy check to make sure the serial number used for XP or even Vista is legit and isn't being used too many times). The silly thing that I found with XP is that even if you set your default update preferences to "download automatically", you still have to manually check for updates (Start button --> Programs --> Windows Update) to get past this authentication. Otherwise, many critical updates won't be downloaded/installed until you get past this one step. But you'd never know, unless you did a manual update check.

I haven't seen the genuine advantage authentication alter or create missing files, as in Bill's problem, which is why I was thinking it may have been a virus.