hmmmm… after my recent posts I fully expected to my name in this post but didn’t… whooohoo… I feel like Homer Simpson!
(and of course, sorry about your wife… ehm…)
Abso-frickin-lutely.
My heart so goes out to Phlosphr’s wife, because I am sure she feels terrible and I am sure she really meant well.
I hope that this experience does not spook her on computers, because that would be awful. I hope this experience does not make her afraid that she’ll “break” it if she clicks the wrong button, so that she’ll forever be timid and afraid. Because I’ve been through that, and that sucks. It takes a long while to get over that.
But I do hope that she will remember next time to wait before doing something major. Phlosphr, is there a big “Windows XP for Dummies” book (or some similar book for XP) in the house? Because that’ll help her feel more confident, to have a manual or book (not the pathetic XP manual that comes with the software) like that around to consult. Not something super-geeky, but some really nice user-friendly book to browse through.
Believe me, I’ve been there. I’ve shed many a tear in front of an errant computer. Books have helped me out of many a bind. I hope she feels better about this whole thing soon.
We don’t have XP for dummies but we do have a couple how to’s. It’s not that she’s totally computer illiterate. It’s that she got wrong info from someone she thoguht she could trust. Tech’s should be more user friendly, and certainly work on their Phone Side Manners.
I’m sorry about what happened…Can I use this as my sigline?
How many times have I heard this one? Never quite so elequently though… I always set my systems up with a 4 gig C: partition at the installation just to install XP and then use the Disk Manager to create a second partition for “storage”. Change your “My Documents” shortcut from C: to your second partition. This keeps your important data seperate from the dreaded “user friendly” XP.
Topaz - yes!
Read_Neck - thats a very good Idea. Plus, Mrs.P is not using my machine anymore. She has her own study, her own machine, and she’ll just have to pick a better way to show me she loves me than installing a better operating system on my machine with little to no knowledge of what she’s doing. 
Sorry!