For goodness sakes, get a professional working on it! I know you don’t have a bunch of $ to spare, but I’m sure something could be worked out.
Best wishes.
Just thought I’d give an update, in case anyone wondered how this story came out.
A friind of kung fu lola and a friend of matt_mcl both offered to help out. kung fu lola’s friend was going to recover my data while Matt’s friend was going to build me a new computer from component’s. In the end, Matt’s friend offered to recover the data – it was easy to do while he was rebuilding the computer, and would take less time. So in the end, he did it for me.
Great guy. He didn’t even charge me, for, what 7 hours of work. And my computer cost me half of what it would have if assembled in the store.
Naturally he has a standing offer to salvage any parts he wants from our old computer.
I was right – it was a virus, a very old one. It was saved on to a CD of image files I’ve had for years – most of them not replaceable since they come from a website of a friend that went down after she died. The images weren’t viral (can images be viral?) so in addition to saving my novel, he saved my images.
I’ve already copied my novel on to a CD, and I’ll be copying my images on to a CD next.
Your writings have been rescued - Let me be the first to say HUZZAH!
Bad news - yes, some creeps have figured out how to make JPEG images carry viruses. The concept was discovered in June or so of this year and was “in the wild” in September.
I’m glad you got your novel back.
Another ‘hurrah!’ from me.