Bill -

Are ya' talkin' 'bout the File Allocation Table, or ya' bad mouthin' my ol' lady.

Depends a little on which file system you're using. There's plain ol' FAT, FAT32, and NTFS, and they work a little differently. I'm not sure whether WinME can use NTFS or not. (And floppy's use FAT12(?)).

Basically, it's just the "index" that keeps track of where all the "root" files and folders are on the drive. If any folder gets too badly messed up the FAT can get fouled. There's supposed to be a duplicate copy that you can copy in, but it takes some "specialized doings," and often if one's fouled the other is too.

The remaining question is "how did it happen, and what's going to keep it from happening again?" We'll hope techie took care of that too.

John