Thanks so much for all your input. Some of it I followed, and some not, such as degaussing which makes no sense to me, I'm sorry to say.

I've been online today for a couple of hours and no sign of the pink-sorry, magenta, has come back, so maybe it's a connection issue since I did just recently move my tower and it could have been enough to jiggle something around.

I'll make note of all you've offered here and see what develops.

(I live in London, by the way, so thanks for the US advice but prices here are quite a bit higher and my only real recourse is the computer fayre down in the city, which intimidates me a bit when I've been there. (Lots of men smoking lots of cigarettes and most speaking with accents sounding eastern european and middle-eastern.) I only mention this because women are few and far between and I have the feeling I'd better know what I need exactly or I'm likely to run into trouble, price-wise.)

I've never heard of freecycle, Richard, but I'll google it and see what comes up.

Again, thanks so much for all your advice.
-Ellen