The damage is done, the operating system wasn't able to repair itself, it simply installed new and put the old setup in a subservient position. If I'm going to fool with it this much I might as well put in a new hard drive and pull the information off of the existing one (moving it to the slave position, but I don't know if I have room in the box to do that so it will probably go in an external enclosure).

Have you looked at any of those external drive bays, the ones that hold more than one external hard drive? Visit New Egg and see all of the choices. Whew! Some of them don't cost any more than a single-drive enclosure, but what I want is a place to park at least one hard drive, better yet, two, where each has s a letter drive and I can read and write to them. My desk is a mess of components and you should see the wires hanging off of the back of it.

SRS