Here's the deal. First of all, last week, for some reason, I could not access any of my Word, PowerPoint or pdf files on my IBM X40 laptop, which I've had for two and a half years. I searched everywhere on my hard drive and I couldn't find anything.

When I tried to do a restore and go back and restore my laptop to a date two months earlier, that didn't work, as it froze while it was reconfiguring. I had no choice but to turn it off. When I turned it back on, I got the following message:

Windows could not open because the following file is missing or corrupt
\windows\system32\c_1252.nls

IBM is sending me a restore and recovery disk, since I don't have one.

But here's my question: My son told me I should go to a Best Buy and get their geek squad to remove my hard drive and copy it entirely, as when I restore my laptop using the IBM disk, I will lose all my programs. Is that true? If that's the case, I was thinking of going to a local computer repair shop and having them do it, including using the restore disk I'll be getting from IBM.

Thanks in advance for any advice you can give. I am accessing FT now throup my laptop using the Opera browser on my Restore and Recovery option. It ain't pretty, but hey, it works.

Tony